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THE NATION, AND LOUISIANA. 


SPEECH 

• » 

OP 

HON. ROSCOE CONKLING, 

M J 

OF NEW YORK, 


! 

I 


IN THE 


jSENATE OF THE POUTED ^TATES, 




JANUARY 


28 AND 20, 1875. 







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WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 

1875 . 








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Gift. 

JUN 20 mOH 






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SPEECH 


OF 

HON. ROSCOE CONKLING. 


The Senate having under consideration the following resolution, introduced by- 
Mr. SCHURZ: 

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to inquire what leg¬ 
islation by Congress is necessary to secure to the people of the State of Louisiana 
their rights of self-government under the Constitution, and to report with the least 
possible delay by bill or otherwise— 

Mr. CO^KLIKG said: 

Mr. President: My own judgment of tlie fitness of things and of 
the value of time in this brief and fast-ebbing session, would not 
lead me into this so-called debate. Certainly no value placed by my¬ 
self on any opinion of my own would move me to consume an hour now, 
with nothing before the Senate which discussion can affect. But 
when days and weeks have been devoted to serious and exciting topics, 
when many Senators have expressed their views at large,—sometimes 
with reiteration, and no sign of abatement can be seen, a time comes 
when silence may not have even the merit of staunching the flow of 
words. Like a piece on the stage, to borrow a favorite figure of the 
Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Thurman,] the drama which entertains the 
Senate now must have its run; and the appearance of a tiresome 
actor may abridge the period which must elapse before the managers 
will try the jiublic taste with something else. 

The presidential campaign of 1876 has been formally opened. It 
has been opened in the Senate, and legislation waits. It has been 
opened with somewhat of dramatic effect, and much of sensational 
awfulness. The Senator from Ohio, the leader of the opposition, came 
in from the holiday vacation armed with a resolution of inquiry leveled 
at the President of the United States. Its terms were such as to imply 
that the Chief Magistrate had done something to forfeit the ancient 
usage of decorum which our fathers and their children were wont to 
observe when putting questions to the head of the executive depart¬ 
ment. Assuming that tlie brusqueness of the resolve was inadvertent, 
I suggested that it be changed to the customary form. The demeanor 
which this suggestion met, like a signal-gun, told us in an instant that 
we were to be charged all along the line. It was not in order to con¬ 
sider the resolution except by unanimous consent; but no Senator 
objected. Every supporter of the Administration was ready to vote 
for it on the spot. But immediate action, and immediate response to 
the inquiry, was not the end aimed at. Sensation and prejudgment 1 
were sought, and so denunciation began, and days were worn out with 
accusations and assertions which time has already disproved. This 
was not the work of those who support the Administration. They 
waged no debate. They did expostulate against prejudgment. The 
Sehator from Ohio exclaimed yesterday that no one, while his resolu¬ 
tion was pending, justified the acts at New Orleans. No; the majority 



4 


waited for the facts while the Senator and his associates wasted days 
in assertion. When from Tuesday morning till Friday evening the 
Senate had been thus detained, the mover of the resolution proposed 
to postpone it until the succeeding Monday, that hindering declama¬ 
tion might still go on; and then it was that we on this side insisted 
that the resolution should he passed. Such procrastination, in a politi¬ 
cal maneuver, would have been maladroit in us. It was harmless to 
our friends on the other side, because they have a press so facile, so 
convenient, so subserviently loyal to its party. Wherever newspa¬ 
pers raise hue and cry for the democracy it has been published that 
the republican majority of the Senate resisted the resolution, and 
strove to defier and stifle the inquiry. It has been said that fearing 
the truth, we defeated the resolution altogether—ardent admirers of 
the Senator do not yet believe that it has ever been adopted. Let me 
show you an example of the falsehoods which nourish the faith of 
those who assail and accuse Congress and all its works. Here in “The 
Daily Tribune” of Mobile, of January 7, 1875, is an editorial entitled 
“A Blushing Shame.” It thus descants: 

Mr. Thurman deserves the thanks of the entire South for his manly conduct in 
pressing his resolution upon the Senate. He did all he could.. His resolution was 
just and timely, but these qualities were the very ones that secured its defeat. 
The radicals will not permit inquiry which will develop their infamous plots and 
outrages. They prefer darkness, and darkness they intend to have, at the expense 
of every principle of honor and justice. 

One of those who took part in prejudging the case, and condemn¬ 
ing the President in advance, was the Senator from Delaware, [Mr. 
Bayard. ] Giving us much of weighty monition, he did not forgot the 
amendment to make the resolution conform to the custom in such 
eases. He said: 

Mr. President, in my judgment the amendment proposed by the honorable Sen¬ 
ator from New York to this resolution is quite out of place anil unnecessary. 

Proceeding, he alluded to the fact that his name had been men¬ 
tioned among those connected with resolutions, which, asking ques¬ 
tions of the President, had contained the words, “ if in his judgment 
not incompatible with the public interest.” Repudiating the reference 
thus made to him, the Senator proceeded to mention the supposed 
occasion, and to explain the use there of the usual words. Ho said, 
speaking of his resolution : 

I was glad to have it accepted in any form, even with the entirely superfluous, 
and, as I thought then, improper addition which was put upon it. 'I made no ob¬ 
jection to it. In that way alone the resolution, as amended by the Senator from 
New York, came before the Senate. 

“Entirely superfluous and as I thought thou improper addition”— 
that is very explicit, but the Senator was in error I think. It was 
the quaint confession of another public teacher that his fore-sight had 
never been so good as his hind-sight. 

The foresight of the Senator on the 1st of March, 1873, could not 
have been as he now remembers it. 

Here is the record of that day. I read: 

Mr. Bayard offered the following resolution: 

“Resolved, That the President be, and hereby is, requested to” inform the Senate 
whether any commissioned officer of the United States Ar my— 

And so on—the remainder of the resolution need not be read. 

There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution. 

Mr. Conklinq . I suggest to the Senator from Delaware that theresolution ought 
at least to conform to the usual form; and therefore 1 move to insert the words ♦“ if 
in his judgment not incompatible with the public interests.” 

Mr. Bayard. Certainly. 


5 


Mr. Thurman. I should like to know what public interest this information can 
possibly be incompatible with. 

Mr. Conkling. I do not suppose it would he incompatible with any public inter¬ 
est ; but we have adopted that form in all cases because we cannot judge whether 
it might or might not be. 

Mr. Bayard. Certainly; I agree with the Senator .—Congressional Qloibe , part 3, 
third session Forty-second Congress, 1872-”73, page 2082. 

It would seem then, that with attention called clearly to the point, 
the Senator fully agreed with me less than two years ago. Times 
change however and men change with them. 

Returning now to the present occasion, we were not permitted to 
send the resolution to the President until after it had become noto¬ 
rious that a communication from him would anticipate our action if 
our inquiry was longer held back. An answer came promptly—a 
patriotic, frank, and able message, which lies on the table; but de¬ 
nunciation still goes on, under guise of a resolution offered by the 
Senator from Missouri, [Mr. Schurz,] which plainly declares on its 
face that its mover, and those acting with him, have no legislation to 
suggest touching Louisiana, but require the advice and instruction 
of one of the committees of the Senate to tell them what to do. 

I say denunciation goes on. The honorable Senator from Ohio 
yesterday for four hours engaged the attention of the Senate. What 
was his speech ? I mean no discourtesy when I say it was a carping 
criticism. A criticism of whom and of what ? A criticism on law¬ 
breakers, on men moving about as walking monuments of the mercy 
and magnanimity of the American people, and ever blustering about 
their rights, and by deeds of violence keeping the South in unceasing 
turmoil ? A criticism of acts which have tarnished the escutcheon of 
the nation, and affrighted humanity ? No, sir; even the bloody revolt 
of the 14th of last September, when more than fifty men were shot 
down in New Orleans, received no word of reprehension. A criti¬ 
cism of the constituted authorities of the country, legislative, execu¬ 
tive, and judicial. The honorable Senator began by reading an ex¬ 
tract from a speech of his own made in 1871, in which he branded the 
acts of the national Congress. He continued by denouncing the acts 
of the President of the United States, of the State executive, and 
of the judiciary of the State and of the nation. 

The Senator from Ohio is he above others, to whom the nation looks 
to know and to state, if not to originate, the policy of his party—to 
set forth what his party means to do, ajicl what should be done. We 
heard him through a carefully elaborated speech. Did the Senate 
learn anything of the policy of the democratic party ? Did we hear 
of any practical measure of legislation in respect of the southern ques¬ 
tion ? Did the Senator from Ohio tell us what to do with the imbroglio 
in Louisiana? No, sir. There is a wide difference between a critic 
and an architect. It is easier to pull down than to build up. And 
the speech of the Senator confirms the belief that the policy of the 
democratic party upon this question, as upon the financial problem, 
and upon every great question, consists only in denouncing whatever 
is done by those charged with public aff airs. The statesmanship and 
the policy of that party seems only to rise to the height of abusing its 
adversaries. • 

One passage, apparently a passage less studied than some others, 
in the speech of the honorable Senator, was pregnant with disclosure. 
He said in effect, I do not quote his words, “If such be the condition 
of the South it is time that the party which through the war and 
since the war has guided affairs should give way, and let another 
party ccme in.” Ah, Mr. President, there is the key to the political 


6 


secrets of the managers of the South and of the North ever since 
fighting ceased. There is the clew which unravels the web ; there 
is the gospel of party as whispered and muttered from the beginning 
of the effort to reconstruct the South. Make reconstruction a mis¬ 
carriage, refuse to aid it in good faith, thwart it, baffle it, make the 
worst of it, keep up unending agitation, disturb, foment, revolution¬ 
ize, and the time will come when the country, wearied and worn 
with commotion, will accept anything for a change! 

The honorable Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Scott] knows bet¬ 
ter than I do how true this is. Witness after witness before the com¬ 
mittee of which he was chairman, explained it in detail. When fight¬ 
ing ceased, every man in the South could vote. The rightof self-gov¬ 
ernment and the ballot were as free and universal in every Southern 
State as in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. No man was denied 
the right to vote, not even Jefferson Davis. Did they exercise it in 
good faith? No, sir. On the contrary social ostracism was brought 
to bear to deter men from accepting public office, and from aiding 
to raise again the fabric of government. The party, managed by 
those who had received the nation’s forgiveness, refused to set candi¬ 
dates in the field in some instances; refused to vote for or against 
measures submitted to them; refused by every negative method to 
accept and help on the efforts of Congress to rebuild and rehabili¬ 
tate the South; refused at all times cordial compliance with the new 
amendments of the Constitution and laws made to effectuate them; 
and now we are taunted by their leader on this floor with the partial 
success of their sulky and sinister designs. The plan was to abandon 
the beginnings of reconstruction of the Southern State governments 
to incompetent and unfit hands—the hope was that if the ignorant, 
the mercenary, and the unpopular, were left to act in local affairs 
under the new order of things, and paraded as the apostles of recon¬ 
struction and the representatives of the national legislation, the 
whole system would become odious, and would fail. 

Such were the auspices under which reconstruction was launched, 
and the real obstacle it has encountered from the outset has been the 
deep-seated obstinacy of those who have sacrificed their own true 
interest, and the peace and prosperity of their States, to unquenched 
resentment and prejudice. Hatred of suffrage and equal rights for 
black men, has ruled the hour; had those who received the clemency 
of the nation accepted it in good faith, this Chamber would not 
resound to-day with the discussion which now proceeds. 

The honorable Senator from Ohio has exhumed the election of 
1872 and made that a background against which to set off the occur¬ 
rence of three weeks ago in New Orleans. What have the two events 
to do w ith each other ? Who planned the 'election in Louisiana of 
1872 ? Who turned it into a disgraceful tangle of fraud and force ? 
Warmoth. Who was Warmoth ? The leader of the opposition to the 
national Administration—the charioteer of the grand combination 
troupe of liberals and democrats who attempted to carry Louisiana 
and enough other States to make Mr. Greeley President. And now 
the republican party is belabored with what Warmoth and his des¬ 
perate accomplices (lid. 

The election of 1872 in Louisiana was an organized fraud. Hear 
what was said of it by the committee of this body: 

The testimony shows that leading and sagacious politicians of the State, who 
were acting with Warmoth, entertained the opinion before the election that War- 
moth’s control of the election machinery was equivalent to twenty thousand votes; 
and we are satisfied, by the testimony, that this opinion was well founded. We 
believe that had registration been accessible to all, and polling-places been prop- 


7 


erly established, the result of the election would have been entirely different. 
And although we cannot approve of such a canvass as that made by the Lynch 
board, who seem to have acted upon the principle of “fighting the devil with 
fire,” and circumventing fraud by fraud, and cannot say that Kellogg’s govern¬ 
ment was elected, nevertheless we believe that Kellogg’s government was defeated, 
and the popular voice reversed, bv the fraudulent manipulation of the election. 

If the Senate should be inclined not to go behind the official returns of the elec¬ 
tion, then the McEnery government and legislature must bo recognized as the 
lawful government of the State, and McMillen, if regularly elected by that legis¬ 
lature, should be seated in the Senate in place of Kellogg. But your committee 
believe that this would be recognizing a government based upon fraud , in defiance of 
the wishes and intention of the voters of that State. 

Yes, sir, your committee believe that recognizing McEnery “would 
he recognizing a government based upon fraud, in defiance of the 
wishes aud intentions of the voters of that State.” And yet the 
honorable Senator from Ohio comes now to complain that McEnery 
was not installed under color of this detestable fraud, and was not 
recognized by the President. The result of that election was con¬ 
tested. It was suffocated by fraud, and the result beclouded in 
doubt. In every forum in which the result has been searched for, 
the decision has been against McEnery. The constitution of Louisiana 
provided modes in which the title of those claiming offices under 
the election could be tested. Some of these modes were applied. The 
question of Kellogg’s election was repeatedly presented to the State 
courts of Louisiana. The decision in every instance was against 
McEnery. The question was presented to the House of Representa¬ 
tives of the United States, and the House decided against McEnery. 
The question was presented to the Senate of the United States, and 
the commit tee of the Senate, with only one dissent, decided against 
McEnery. The question was presented to the President of the United 
States; he decided it against McEnery; but he sent a message to 
Congress saying in effect, “ I have made the best disposition I could 
of this vexed question; I invite you to reverse my judgment if you 
find the truth will warrant it; ” and Congress by non-action and 
acquiescence affirmed the judgment of the President. Despite all 
these adjudications, defiance, revolution, broil festering to rebellion, 
open refusal to submit to authority and law, goes on in Louisiana ; 
and the Senator from Ohio comes with a special plea, and going back 
to the old jungle of the election of 1872, he galvanizes an eff<Ste ques¬ 
tion, and seeks to cloak or extenuate the unbridled lawlessness which 
has never desisted, and never been awed except by power. 

The Senator made the customary onslaught on Judge Durell, a 
judge appointed, not by President Grant, but by Pesident Lincoln. 
This judge made an order in New Orleans, the Senator says bad for a 
variety of reasons, one of which was that “ it had no seal,” as if the 
President in Washington knew whether the order had a seal or not. 
Before any such order was made, the President, through the proper 
law officer, had telegraphed to the marshal that the decrees of the 
Federal courts must be obeyed; and, says the astute if not charitable 
Senator, how came the President through the Department of Justice 
to send a telegram to Louisiana that the decrees of courts must be 
obeyed, before this order had been issued, and therefore, before it had 
been resisted ? The Chief Magistrate of the United States has often 
answered the question. He answers it on the first page of his recent 
message which the Senator from Ohio must have studied, because he 
complains that he could not find in it everything he wanted. The 
Pesident says: 

To enable the court to inquire as to the truth of these allegations— 


8 


Referring to tlie suit then pending before Judge Durell— 

a temporary restraining order was issued against the defendants, which was at once 
wholly disregarded ana treated with contempt by those to whom it was directed. 

The occurrence here stated, had preceded the telegram to which 
the Senator calls attention. Again, the President says that the orders 
to which reference has been made have been held to be illegal, but— 

while they are so held and considered, it is not to be forgotten that the mandates 
of his court had been contemptuously defied, and they were made while wild scenes 
of anarchy were sweeping away all restraint of law and order. 

Whatever may be said or thought of those matters, it was only made known to 
me that process of the United States court was resisted. 

There is the answer to the question, so unwarrantably suggestive 
as it was something wrong and hidden on the part of the President. 
There is a plain and adequate answer. The President, on notice of 
resistance of judicial process, telegraphed that the decrees of courts 
must be respected and obeyed. What else could he say; what else 
could be said in the presence of the facts by any Chief Magistrate 
who reverenced his oath of office ? 

Mr. President, this debate revolves on one pivot—an occurrence 
on the 4th of January in a room in a distant city. In a room in a 
hotel in the city of New Orleans—which hotel is leased this year to 
the governor, the lieutenant-governor, and the speaker, for public 
use—a transaction took place which lias ostensibly incited all the 
speeches to which we have lately listened. Speaking of it, I say first, 
that no responsibility for the affair in New Orleans on the 4th of Jan¬ 
uary, touches the President of the United States. No blame for what 
was done or said can be laid at his door. The first information he 
received was simultaneous with that of other citizens. The news¬ 
papers of the following day were his first informants. He had no 
expectation or apprehension in advance. If there were those in Wash¬ 
ington, or nearer Washington than the limits of Louisiana, who had 
notice that revolution was to be attempted on the 4th of January, the 
President of the United States was not one of them. He therefore 
had made no provision for such a contingency, and no preparation for 
the tidings of the event. Nearly a fortnight previously, and on the 
24th of December, the President had requested General Sheridan to 
make a tour of observation, not in Louisiana alone, but in the South¬ 
ern States—several States were named, and all were included. No 
personal conference was held between the President and General 
Sheridan. The general was in Chicago, and the communication was 
in writing. It was forwarded to General Sherman, the General of 
the Army. In it was suggested a conference with General McDowell. 
The substance of the communication is this: 

War Department, 
Washington City , December 24,1874. 

General P. H. Sheridan, 

Chicago, 111.: 

General: Tbe President sent for me this morning, and desires me to say to you 
that he wishes you to visit the States of Louisiana and Mississippi, and especially 
New Orleans, in Louisiana, and Yicksburgh and Jackson, in Mississippi, and as¬ 
certain for yourself, and for his information, the general condition of matters in 
those localities. You need not confine your visit to the States of Louisiana and 
Mississippi, and may extend your trip 'to other States, Alabama, &c., if you see 
proper; nor need you confine your visit, in the States of Louisiana and Mississippi, 
to the places named. What the President desires is to ascertain the true condition 
of affairs, and to receive such suggestions from you as you may deem advisable 
and judicious. 

Permission was given to assume command, should he find it well 
at any time to do so. 


9 


Tliere is the official statement, giving the truth and the whole 
truth of the mission on which General Sheridan was sent. The Sen¬ 
ator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] referring to the presence of Gen¬ 
eral Sheridan in Louisiana was pleased to utter this language : 

In the midst of this excitement, in the midst of this’blow at the very heart of 
popular government., who has he selected to preside over the affairs of that State ? 
Lieutenant-General Philip Sheridan, sent by him to New Orleans secretly, not by 
public order known to the people. 

Now observe: 

He is sent down to dragoon the people of Louisiana into slavish, fearful, cring¬ 
ing, un-American obedience to his will and pleasure. 

Such is the comment of a Senator on such an act of the Chief 
Magistrate, and of the Lieutenant-General of the Army. I commit 
to the record, and to the calm scrutiny of after times, the action of 
these officials, and the comment and statement of the Senator. Let 
the truth and the accusation stand side by side. 

When General Sheridan was thus invited to visit the South the 
President had been compelled day after day to listen to wails of woe 
and entreaties for protection to which no man could be deaf, to 
which no Chief Magistrate would dare be indifferent. These cries 
for help did not relate to the election—that had passed. They did not 
concern the ambition of candidates; they concerned the lives, the 
homes, and the property of men, women, and children, who had never 
been false to their flag, and who, under the shadow of that flag, were 
hunted down as if they were wild beasts. These supplications sum¬ 
moned the Chief Magistrate to his feet; they summoned him to bestir 
himself, to inquire, to find out, to see to it that he kept the oath, sworn 
before the American people, which binds him to see that the laws are 
faithfully executed. 

One of these warnings had reached him but three days before. It 
came from one who for twenty years had been a resident of Shreveport, 
for twenty-eight years a resident of the South. It came from a judi¬ 
cial officer, not appointed by the President, but appointed by the court; 
an officer who stated that he had read every word of his communica¬ 
tion to the general commanding the department, and that the gen¬ 
eral confirmed it all. I will read some passages of this communica¬ 
tion ; it is dated December 16, 1874 : 

It is scarcely too much to say tbat the white voters of each parish north of Red 
River constituted an armed conspiracy, with the scarcely disguised purpose of 
carrying the election at all events—by threats, intimidation, and fraud, if possible, 
and by violence if necessary, all of which, first and last, were used freely. 

The scheme here was to expel from the country the republican leaders, and then 
to frighten the negroes into acquiescence with their wishes; and this scheme was 
pursued to the end, with this modification, that after the arrival of troops the ex¬ 
pelled leaders returned, but did not dare to go out of Shreveport, and did not dare 
to mingle freely with the people or to express publicly their sentiments. 

The whites in all this portion of the State were united upon this programme 
almost to a man. This unanimity did not result all from choice, but so formidable 
had the organizanion become by August that even those who disapproved no longer 
dared to resist, even passively, and took shelter in the white party. 

******* 

The Coushatta affair, occurring in the last days of July, and in the guilt of which 
we believe from our present knowledge not less than two hundred whites partici¬ 
pated, more or less proximately, seemed to serve them as an incentive to closer 
union and more rigorous action. A very large number, scattered up and down the 
river from Shreveport to Natchitoches, seeking immunity from their guilt in the 
destruction of all law and public order, redoubled their efforts to terrorize the 
blacks and to annihilate ail opposition. 

Perhaps I cannot give you in few words a better idea of the ascendant arrogance 
and intolerance of the white leaders, than to say that the Shreveport Times news¬ 
paper—the leading exponent of the principles of the party in the State—holdly and 
unqualifiedly justified the Coushatta assassination on the sole ground of political 
necessity. 


10 


The orators of the party did substantially the same thing during the canvass, and 
the less prudent speak of it to this day as a good thing. Even Governor McEnery, 
in a speech in this place, as I am well informed, openly advocated the lynching of 
one of the republican leaders residing here, and a man of good character. 

* * * * * * * 

The whites are now driving the freedmen from their homes, naked and penni¬ 
less, to endure the severities of winter as best they may. This very evening, and 
since I commenced this letter, a colored man. of honest and intelligent expression, 
comes in and tells me that last night about nine o’clock his employer, a white man, 
(well known to me,) by force (displaying a pistol and threatening to use it) put him 
and his wife and three helpless children out of their house to spend the night, as 
best they might, in the public highway, which they did under the open canopy of 
heaven; and what may be put down as a special aggravation of the offense is, that 
two of the children were ill and taking medicine, ana one of them was so ill that it 
was not expected to survive. These people (turned out) were partners in the crop 
which they had raised on the lands of the man who turned them out , and the crop had 
not yet been divided , and is all in the possession of the land-owner ivho turned them 
out. This man had voted the republican ticket at the late election. 

This is only one case in many coming to my knowledge daily. A few days ago 
complaint was made before me'against seven white men in the adjoining parish of 
De Soto, charging them with conspiring to plunder, rob, and murder one poor de¬ 
fenseless old negro by the name of John Allston, and an extensive and full inquiry 
into the matter revealed the fact that the charge was well laid for they in fact not 
only plundered him and his family, but murdered the old man outright. 

These people are systematically intimidated, brow-beaten, personally maltreated, 
cheated of their earnings, cheated of their suffrage, driven from their homes in 
penury to endure the inclemency of winter, and cheated of their rights to vindi¬ 
cate themselves before the courts. In simple truth they no longer have any rights 
which the whites voluntary respect, or which they have themselves the means or 
ability to make them respect. 

* X * * * * * 

So numerous and wholesale are the offenses of the whites against these defense¬ 
less creatures, that I almost hesitate to name approximately the number of persons 
subject to arrest and punishment for aggravated violation of the enforcement and 
Ku-Klux acts, within fifty miles of this place. To be entirely safe, I will put it at 
two hundred and fifty. 

Sir, it was when so called to make inquiry, that the President re¬ 
quested the Lieutenant-General to repair t.o the South and observe and 
report its condition. It was after such representations made not only 
by a United States commissioner, but by many citizens and officials, 
that it was determined to send a man not likely to be deceived to 
become an eye-witness of the situation. 

Calling attention to the President’s freedom from all privity or 
relationship with the recent doings in New Orleans, I ask the Senate 
to consider how provident, discreet, and mild it was to send to a dis¬ 
turbed region a distinguished and trusted officer whose observation 
would be valuable, and whose presence might at the same time have 
a restraining influence on the lawless, and the violent. 

Attempts have been made to adduce something unfavorable to the 
President from the fact that a few soldiers have for some time been 
stationed in Louisiana. The presence of the small force quartered 
there, was twice lawful and twice right. It was right and lawful, 
flrst, because our slender military establishment must be somewhere ; 
our soldiers must be stationed about in the States and Territories: 
and, wherever they are, their right is too clear to be questioned. But, 
again, troops had been sent to New Orleans on the 14tli of Septem¬ 
ber, on regular requisition from the governor, when organized 
revolt had seized the government and the archives of Louisiana, over¬ 
powered all State authority, and driven the officers of the State 
fugitives to an edifice within the sole jurisdiction of the United 
States. 

The advent of a detachment of troops, had, it is true, curbed the 
career of the revolt; but New Orleans still remained a seething caul¬ 
dron of disorder, and to ( have ordered the soldiers away where they 


11 


were not needed while yet the only half-stifled voice of revolution 
was audible, would have been a crime possible only with a President 
in actual connivance with violence and treason. Can it be seriously 
contended that since September the President should have ordered 
all troops to leave Louisiana ? 

What would George Washington have said'to ordering troops away 
from New Orleans with the air murky with threatened outbreaks as 
Sheridan and all others have described it, and locating them in some 
other region where no pretense of need of their presence could be made ? 
This question was presented to Washington, presented to him in less 
vivid colors, after four counties in Western Pennsylvania had resisted 
a tax on whisky. An inspector and a surveyor had been assaulted, 
some damage had been done to property, nothing so formidable had 
been done or threatened as was actually done in Louisiana, and Wash¬ 
ington ordered out and marched into Pennsylvania fifteen thousand 
men, going into the field himself. Order was soon enforced. “The revolt 
was abandoned ”—to employ a phrase current here when speaking of 
Louisiana,—the revolt was abandoned; there was an end of it, in all 
but lurking and muttered discontent. But still soldiers in great 
numbers continued to tread the soil of Pennsylvania embodied as an 
army. They were three months’ men and their term of enlistment was 
near expiring at the time Washington wrote the words to which I shall 
ask you to listen. These soldiers had been called suddenly and un¬ 
expectedly from their homes, and every consideration save only the 
supreme public good, urged their return the moment actual violence 
and resistance ceased. All this was seen, and heard, and felt. What 
said Washington, then Chief Magistrate of the Republic ? Alluding 
to the fact that a spirit of discontent still lurked in the State of Penn¬ 
sylvania, alluding to the danger that it might again break out in 
breaches of the peace, addressing the two Houses of Congress, Wash¬ 
ington said: 

Had there been room for a persuasion that the laws were secure from obstruc¬ 
tion ; that the civil magistrate was able to bring to justice such of the most culpa¬ 
ble, as have not embraced the proffered terms of amnesty, and may be deemed fit 
objects of example; that the friends of peace and good government were not in 
need of that aid and countenance, which they ought always to receive, and I trust 
ever will receive, against the vicious and turbulent, I should have caught with 
avidity the opportunity of restoring the militia to their families and homes. But 
succeeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been 
done; it being now confessed, by those who were not inclined to exaggerate the ill 
conduct of the insurgents, that their malevolence was not pointed merely to a par¬ 
ticular law, but that a spirit inimical to all order has actuated many of the offend¬ 
ers. If the state of things had afforded reason for the continuance of my presence 
with the Army, it would not have been withholden; but, every appearance assuring 
such an issue as will redound to the reputation and strength of the United States, 
I have judged it most proper to resume my duties at the seat of Government, leav¬ 
ing the chief command with the governor of Virginia. 

Still, however, as it is probable that, in a commotion like the present, whatsoever 
may he the pretense, the purposes of mischief and revenge may not be laid aside; 
the stationing of a small force for a certain period in the four western counties of 
Pennsylvania, will be indispensable, whether we contemplate the situation of those 
who are connected with the execution of the laws, or of others who may have ex¬ 
posed themselves by an honorable attachment to them.— Spark's Writings of Wash¬ 
ington, volume 12, pages 48 and 49. 

Mr. CONKLING. There is an opinion of Washington of the pro¬ 
priety of continuing troops u in the theater of a chastised revolt, after it 
is apparently over. It is easy to apply the opinion of Washington to 
the case in hand, a case much stronger than that which addressed 
itself to him. 

President Grant thus states the present case in this particular: 

Troops had been sent to the State— 


12 


I read from bis message of the 13th instant— 
under this requisition of the governor, and as other disturbances seemed imminent 
they were allowed to remain there to render the executive such aid as might become, 
necessary to enforce the laws of the State, and repress the continued violence which 
seemed inevitable the moment Federal support should be withdrawn. 

It is to be remembered -that in this instance the insurgents, to quell 
whom the troops were ordered to New Orleans, had never to the 4th 
of January, have never to this moment, laid down their own arms, or 
given up the arms which they seized from the State of Louisiana. I 
heard a Senator apply the words “pitiful plea,” if I remember aright, 
to anything to be said touching this retention of arms, and the refusal 
to surrender them, by the insurgents of September 14. Nevertheless 
I remind the Senate that although the President on the 14th of Sep¬ 
tember by proclamation called on the insurgents at New Orleans to 
disperse within five days, and to lay down their arms, and return to 
then* homes, now after more than three months have elapsed, they 
stand still defying the national authority. _ Speaking upon infor¬ 
mation received from the Senator from Louisiana, [Mr. West,] I say 
that “ the State arms taken possession of by white-leaguers and not yet 
returned are 2 mountain howitzers, 624 Springfield breech-loading 
rifles, 301 Winchester rifles, 664 Enfield rifles, 93 Spencer carbines, 
and 1,590 bayonets. They are ^State arms, and those men carry 
them to-day, and are in rebellion against the Executive proclamation 
to lay them down.” 

Standing at the bar of the American people, a tribunal too great, 
too virtuous, too intelligent, too brave, to be meanly or passionately 
unjust, the Chief Magistrate needs no labored defense for leaving sol¬ 
diers of the United States to remain in Louisiana, whither they had 
been so recently summoned to protect life and law against a plot so 
bloody and audacious, a plot surrendered in a spirit so implacable and 
defiant. 

Want of knowledge, then, of the plans for the 4th of January, the 
circumstances explaining the presence of troops, and explaining the 
personal presence of General Sheridan, put the President beyond all 
privity with the affair at the State-house. This full exoneration ap¬ 
pears from the message on our table, and from the official documents 
which bear it out. But forty-eight hours before it came, the honor¬ 
able Senator from Missouri, [Mr. Schurz,] telling us that he intended 
to speak with calmness and impartiality, informed the country that 
he already possessed all the information useful in forming a judgment, 
and then lie proceeded to arraign and bitterly to reflect upon the Pres¬ 
ident as the doer of the deed in Louisiana on the 4th of January—the 
deed, as the Senator from Missouri set it forth in the prismatic colors 
of fancy. Lest injustice be done to the Senator, I read from his 
speech: 

Mr. Schukz. Mr. President, I beg the Senate to believe me when I say that I 
approach this subject in no partisan spirit. 

* * ★ * * * * 

I have formed my opinions with deliberation and impartiality, and I shall en¬ 
deavor to express them in the calmest and most temperate language at my com¬ 
mand 

*■ * * * * * * 

In the debates of last week it was frequently said that no expression of opinion 
upon that occurrence would be quite legitimate until an official report setting forth 
all the details of fact should be before us. I do not quite think so. All the impor¬ 
tant circumstances of the case have come to our knowledge through a multitude of 
concurrent statements, among them an elaborate dispatch of General Sheridan, 
statements from Mr. Kellogg and Mr. Wiltz, and numerous reports in the news¬ 
papers of the country, all agreeing upon the essential points. I believe the addi¬ 
tional details which still can be furnished will not change the aspect of the case as 
to its real significance. 


13 


The Senator having thus qualified himself to speak at once as an 
expert, and as one too serene to be prejudiced, proceeded thus “ to ed¬ 
ucate the country ”—another Senator said the object of this debate 
was “ to educate the country,” and I judge it was in that view that 
it pleased the honorable Senator from Missouri to utter himself thus: 

It is said that trouble was threatening between contending parties in Louisiana. 
Suppose that had been so; but that is not the question. The question is, where is 
the law from which the National Government, in case of threatening trouble in a 
State, derives its power to invade the legislative body of that State by armed force, 
and to drag out persons seated there as members that others may take their places 1 
Were is that law, I ask? You will search the Constitution, you will search the 
statutes in vain. 

And again: 

We have an act before us indicating a spirit in our Government— 

That is not the government of Louisiana— 

in our Government which either ignores the Constitution and the laws, or so in¬ 
terprets them that they cease to be the safeguard of the independence of legislation 
and of the rights and liberties of ourpeople. And that spirit shows itself in a shape 
more alarming still in the instrument the Executive has chosen to execute hia be¬ 
hests. 

Such, Mr. President, is “the calmest and most temperate language” 
of a Senator, who, standing on the ashes of human ambition, and 
placidly contemplating the shortcomings and backslidings of a nation 
which he tells us is “on the downward slope,” feels himself called upon 
and fitted in advance of the evidence, to weigh in exact scales with 
unfevered hand the motives and the acts of others charged with great 
and onerous trusts. The meanest culprit charged with crime, be it 
petty or enormous, must be heard before he can be condemned, and 
a presumption of innocence acquits him till he is proven guilty; but 
for an American President, in the American Senate, there is neither 
hearing nor presumption. Such is the passion and remorselessness 
of party, such the bitterness of man! 

1 Mr. President, General Sheridan is equally undeserving of praise or 
blame for the doings in New Orleans on the 4th of January. He was not 
even a spectator of the drama in any of its parts. He was, it is true, 
personally present in New Orleans, and at half after nine o’clock in the 
evening, hours after the affair had ended, he assumed the command 
which alone gave him any more control than any other wayfarer in 
the streets. He states this fact himself; but with that innate 
heroism which will be worn as one of the brightest trophies of the 
nation when his traducers are forgotten, he adds that he is willing to 
be held responsible for what others did to preserve the peace. He 
offered himself as a victim to a storm in which older men, not trained 
to arms alone, but to the law, had lost their feet. Not being how¬ 
ever within the law of agency which enables a principal to affirm 
the act of his agent, Sheridan cannot, nor will the nation let him, 
make himself responsible for acts which he did not and could not do. 
Ho sent to his superior, not to us, or to the public, dispatches which 
have been widely misread and twisted from their meaning ; but Sher¬ 
idan has not yet to learn that one who stands as he does in the glare 
of the public eye, will be misunderstood and misrepresented. 

When conflagration had swept the proudest city of the West; when 
homes, and stately edifices, and marble blocks, lay in the ashes of a 
fire which devoured iron and stone;—when relics and household gods, 
the cherished store of families, were exposed in the street, there was 
a dissatisfied minority impatient of the forms of law, who in that sea 
of woe and flame, followed their opportunity as the shark follows the 
ship. They did not seek the lives, but only the property of others. 


14 


Sheridan, in command of the soldiers of the United States, made with 
their bayonets a cordon around the places of deposit. Ho fenced in 
the goods and chattels of citizens with Federal bayonets. He saved 
the property and kept the peace, but displeasure waited on him. 
The governor of Illinois decorated him with liis censure in a special 
message. Men asked a grand jury to indict him, meaning to trail his 
plume in the degradation of judicial accusation. The press was 
shockedatthe employment of soldiers at a tire—next to a Legislature, a 
fire is as bad a place for soldiers as can be. This was all very ominous, 
but Sheridan rose phcenix-like from the ashes, and the nation held 
him dearer than before. He was widely and bitterly condemned, and 
belied, for the responsibility he took, for the lives and the property 
he saved; he bided his time then, and the time came when those who 
stoned him would have gathered the stones again to build him a 
monument. Very likely he can wait for the truth to be known now. 
He has himself done nothing up to this time in Hew Orleans, save 
to assume command and retain it. 

What he said to his superior officer, was not included in the ap¬ 
proval telegraphed to him by the Secretary of War. I say this, 
measuring my statement; I say it while there still rings in my ears 
denunciation of the Administration because of the approving dis¬ 
patches the Secretary of War returned to Sheridan. On the 6th of 
January the Secretary received from Sheridan this dispatch: 

There is some excitement in the rotunda of the Saint Charles Hotel to-night upon 
the publication by the newspapers of my dispatch to you calling the secret armed 
organization “banditti.” Give yourself' no uneasiness. I see my way dear if you 
will only have confidence. 

A man begirt on every side by difficulties and dangers, confronted 
by a public temper so malignant as to vent itself not only in violence, 
but in petty social affront—a man far from his superior, and misrep¬ 
resented every hour the telegraph can work, fears that truthless 
dispatches fed out through the press may have unsettled the confi¬ 
dence of his chief, and so he telegraphs “ if you will only have confi¬ 
dence. I see my way clear.” On the spur of the moment the Secretary 
answers: 

Your telegrams all received ; the President and all of us have full confidence, and 
thoroughly approve your course. 

There, an administrator less sagacious than the Secretary of War, 
a lawyer less astute, would have seen, when he came to read his dis¬ 
patch deliberately, was a peg to hang an accusation on. “ Approve 
your course.” Might that not mean all the suggestions that Sheridan 
had made to his superior officer ? To undeceive Sheridan and all 
others, if such could be deemed the meaning, that same day he reviews 
and revises his dispatch thus : 

I telegraphed you hastily to-day answering your dispatch. You seem to fear that 
we have beon misled by biased or partial statements of your acts. 

I emphasize it “ your acts.” Not what you may have suggested to 
your superior officer, whether by written or oral conversation, but 
“ your acts,” are the words of the Secretary. 

Be assured that the President and Cabinet confide in your wisdom and rest in the 
belief that all acts of yours — 

Thus twice distinguishing, first between acts of Sheridan, and the 
acts of all others, and second distinguishing against everything of 
Sheridan’s save only his acts — 

rest in the belief that all acts of yours hare been and will be judicious. This I 
intended to say in my brief telegram. 

Much presumption of reason must be reversed, as much presump- 


15 


tion of innocence lias been violated throughout this discussion, in 
order to stretch these two dispatches of the Secretary of War so as to 
make them testify approval of mere suggestions by General Sheridan 
not of anything he purposed or meditated doing himself, but of 
expedients Congress or the President might see fit to adopt. These 
were impulsive informal remarks made in the freedom and confidence 
of personal intercourse—made by telegraph it is true, but no more 
amounting to acts of Sheridan, than if meeting the Secretary of War 
in the street the words had dropped from his lips. Sheridan did sug¬ 
gest impossible and violent modes of proc eding; and as a consti¬ 
tutional lawyer he could not obtain a diploma, and hardly the degree 
of L.L.D. from any chary college in the laud. It has been charged 
upon him that he branded the people of Louisiana at large as “ ban¬ 
ditti.” An impetuous governor of a Western State said, as he is 
reported, that Sheridan branded u every man in three States as a 
bandit.” If he did so, he did wrong, he did grievous wrong, he was 
as violent and unjust as some Senators have been; but I cannot so 
read his dispatch. Let me read it aloud. 

New Orleans, Louisiana, January 5, 1875. 

W. W . Belknap, 

Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.: 

I think that the terrorism now existing in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas 
could be entirely removed and confidence and fair-dealing established by the arrest 
and trial of the ringleaders of the armed White Leagues. If Congress would pass a 
bill declaring them banditti they could be tried by a military commission. The ring¬ 
leaders of this banditti, who murdered men here on the XAth of last September, and also 
more recently at Vieksburgh, Mississippi, should, in justice to law and order and the 
peace and prosperity of this southern part of the country, be punished. It is possible 
that if the President would issue a proclamation declaring them banditti, no further 
action need be taken, except that which would devolve upon me. 

P. H. SHERIDAN, 
Lieutenant-General, United States Army. 

If Sheridan here calls banded murderers “banditti,” what code 
has he offended ? The dispatch applies the term to notorious male¬ 
factors, to men who murder, rob, and burn; and those who object 
are angry, and such Sheridan has offended. If there were in fact no 
such malefactors, he has described nobody, he has stigmatized nobody. 
If his words do hit existing persons, he may not be much of a sol¬ 
dier, but as a phrase-monger he cannot be despised. Rhetoricians, 
and word-hunters have reason to tremble for their laurels—Sheridan 
is a dangerous Richmond in the field. He may not be great in things, 
but he is clever in names. We have heard a good deal about blood 
curdling at this dispatch; I hope all this same blood curdled at the 
inhuman and dastardly massacres for whose despicable authors Sher¬ 
idan has found a name. 

The right of Sheridan has been challenged in this Chamber “ to 
breathe the free air of a republic.” Mr. President, that degenerate, 
apostate generation of Americans, which, knowing the services of 
General Sheridan, shall judge him “ unfit to breathe the free air of a 
republic,” ought to burn the memorials of our fathers by the common 
hangman, dance on the tomb at Mount Vernon, and fling down the 
obelisk on Bunker Hill. We have been reminded that “ this cavalry 
officer ” hewed his way to renown “ with his bloody sword.” I believo 
he did. His sword was red, not with the blood of the innocent and the 
unoffending, but with the blood of men in arms, men embodied under 
the uplifted banners of revolt, striving to dismember their native 
land, to perpetuate the crime and curse of slavery, to destroy the fair¬ 
est fabric of free government that the world has ever seen. Sheri¬ 
dan’s sword was not the sword of an assassin, stabbing the humble 


and the helpless, but the sword of a soldier fighting that free govern¬ 
ment might not perish from the earth. 

These are not grateful reminiscences. I would gladly let by-gones 
be by-gones; but when the most illustrious soldiers of the Union are 
taunted with the deeds of valor which gave victory to us in our direst 
struggle, the retrospect is forced upon us. Sweeping denunciations, 
opprobrious imputations, continual disparagement of the national 
authorities, only stir and fan the smoldering embers of sectional hate. 
They will not pacify the South; they will not carry the next presi¬ 
dential election. They are dragon’s teeth, and they grow into lawless 
, vengeance. Here is a newspaper printed in Louisiana on the 16th of 
this month, eleven days after the Senate began to ring with these de¬ 
nunciations. Look at this reflex of the hard words we have heard. 

Every country lias had its patriot to rise up, with a Heaven-strengthened arm, 
and in freedom’s cause strike down the petty tyrant oppressing it. To kill in self¬ 
protection is justifiable always. To rid the world of‘such a monster as Sheridan 
would be a deed for all the world to applaud. We don’t mean for a midnight masked 
assassin to slay him, but for the people of Hew Orleans, of Louisiana, in the majesty 
of their might to rise up and shoot him down on the streets as they would a rabid dog , 
in the broad open day, with the sunlight of God’s heaven shining down upon the 
act and growing brighter in approval. Texans will indorse the act, and indorse it 
with bayonets if need be. 

Such are the fruits of violent counsels given out by men high in 
party confidence. 

No, Mr. President, the praise and the blame of January 4th belong 
to the actors in the scenes it witnessed. And here, one would sup¬ 
pose, in this forum at least, discussion might pause ; here, one would 
suppose the Senate might take leave of the baffled plot in the legis¬ 
lative hall. When Governor Kellogg is impeached or indicted; when 
General Emory or General De Trobriand is court-martialed or prose¬ 
cuted ; when the two men who accompanied General Do Trobriand 
are sued or proceeded against, several grave questions will arise. The 
Senator from Ohio cried out yesterday “What excuse has Emory?” 
I do not know, Mr. President. I do uot appear for General Emory. 
I am not his attorney of record, or his counsel, nor is he triable 
here. I do not come to champion, justify, or befriend, either of these 
persons. I do not appear to vindicate the President of the United 
States. He needs no vindication. He was a stranger to the whole 
proceeding. I do not appear to champion the republican party. 
The republican party had no part or lot in the affair. The remedies 
of those aggrieved are ample, and I cannot believe that the Legisla¬ 
ture of Louisiana died of the attempt of a minority to capture it, or 
of the failure of that attempt. This was said in the democratic 
meeting in the city of New York. It was there asserted that the Leg¬ 
islature expired when five intruders were silenced and retired to seats 
assigned to other spectators. The announcement was received with 
applause; but I cannot accept it. Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, one of 
that radiant constellation which sheds the gladsome light of juris¬ 
prudence on the democratic party, is reported in the New York Times 
to have said: 

I alluded at the commencement of my remarks to that fundamental principle 
which renders it utterly impossible for any external power of any nation what¬ 
ever to interfere with the right of State members to hold their position and exercise 
their functions, and I affirm that when a single member, by any interference whatso¬ 
ever other than an order of the body, is expelled from that body, its legal existence is 
destroyed because its authority is destroyed. | Applause. | 

This view of the subject renders it the more consoling that no demo¬ 
cratic member, and no man in the minority entitled to take part, was 
molested on the occasion. The members who were molested, belonged 


17 


to the majority; they were only imprisoned and assaulted, and cla¬ 
mored down, and shut out of their chamber; aud wo are not told that 
such violence takes the life of a Legislature. 

It is no part of my purpose, I repeat, to vindicate Governor Kellogg. 
Much has been done in Louisiana, formerly and lately, on both 
sides, which I cannot approve. If my wish could prevail, iniquity, 
wherever found, would be chastised and eradicated. I speak only 
for common sense and common right. We have been compelled, in 
advance of the evidence, in advance of the truth, to hear the guilt 
or innocence of Kellogg and the rest argued as if the parties and the 
subject were all before us, andas if we had jurisdiction to try them. The 
questions have been presented with many disguises and distortions, it 
seems to me, and of some of these I moan to speak. For this purpose 
I have nothing to do with Mr. Kellogg, except that he was acting- 
governor of Louisiana. All the powers which the governor of that 
State possesses, all the prerogatives he wields, all the attributes 
wherewith he is endowed, Mr. Kellogg held. If there was latent de¬ 
fect or infirmity in his title to office, the fact is not an element of the 
case ; it is wholly immaterial to the matter now in hand. Indeed I 
believe no Senator has denied this, unless denial can be found in the 
monotonous slurs with which allusion is made to the name of Kellogg. 
In the long special plea of yesterday, the Senator from Ohio, as lie 
truly said repeating “ a thrice told tale,” floundering again through 
the dismal swamp of the old election of 1872, after all, did not, I 
think, challenge the fact that Kellogg in law held the instrumental¬ 
ities, incarnated the authority, and wielded all the prerogatives of 
the governor of Louisiana. A few other facts are needful to the view 
I shall x>resent, and although others have recited them, or most of 
them, I must recite them too. 

The laws of Louisiana plainly prescribe who did, and who did not, 
constitute the legislative body which alone had power to organize. 
The statutes in express terms confined the power to those returned as 
elected; it was expressly denied to all others. Those holding certi¬ 
ficates of election and enrolled by the secretary of state, and no 
others, could vote or act. By the constitution of Louisiana, con¬ 
tested elections must be decided according to law. They are remit¬ 
ted to the mode fixed by statute. By the constitution, the yeas and 
nays must be entered in the journal—I quote the language—“at the 
desire of any two members, on any question.” So vital I may remind 
you is this provision, that it lives and speaks in all free constitutions. 
The law clearly fixed the mode, and the only mode, in which the act 
of organization could be done. I heard the honorable Senator from 
Missouri [Mr. Bogy] argue the other day that the statutes of Louisi¬ 
ana were satisfied when the clerk of the former house had presented 
himself and called the roll. There, argued the Senator, the law stops, 
and there it is satisfied. I heard the Senator from Ohio yesterday 
also venture on an argument something like this. He spoke of those 
who “stick in the bark;” he said he would not speak of “pettifog¬ 
gers,” but only because it would not be civil. The same Senator re¬ 
ferred to the fact that a committee of the Senate in reviewing the 
manifold provisions of one of the statutes of Louisiana, to which I 
have alluded, found provisions in it conflicting with the constitution 
of the State. Did the honorable Senator mean you to understand 
that the committee intimated that any provision now in question 
was repugnant to the constitution, or in any respect wanting in valid¬ 
ity? The Senator could not have meant that. The fact is exactly 
.opposite. Canvassing the whole statute to find its defects, the commit- 

2 N 


18 


tee pointed out its daws, and no where is there a doubt expressed of 
the binding force of the sections which control and dehno the mode 
of organizing the legislative houses. These are the only sections 
now involved, and the fact that the committee visited no criticism 
on these sections, is affirmative assertion of their foree and validity. 

I would treat with respect any man, who with the statutes of Louisi¬ 
ana before him, has the faith or the courage honestly to think these 
statutes require, as to the organization, and the function of the clerk,, 
only that he should call the roll. But it is a chief canon of con¬ 
struction to read a statute in the light of the object for which it was 
made, in the light of the evil to be remedied, the danger to be averted. 
We know historically that this statute was made for this very case. 
It was enacted after just such an attempt in less degree had been 
made in the Legislature of that State. It was made on purpose, I 
repeat, to avoid and forbid such a stratagem and conspiracy as at¬ 
tempted to dominate the Legislature on the 4th of January. 

The Senator from Ohio said that his colleague had omitted to read 
a provision of one of these statutes, a provision that it should not con¬ 
flict with the constitution of the State of Louisiana. My honorable 
friend from Maine [Mr. Morrill] with hismsual wit remarked that 
“ to omit such a provision would be rough on the constitution.” One 
would think from the remarks of the Senator from Ohio that if the 
statute had not recited that it should not override the constitution, 
the constitution would have been overridden. So microscopic his ex¬ 
amination, so great his refinement on sophistry, that the honorable 
Senator from Ohio solemnly bade us observe that this statute gazetted 
all the w r orld that it really did not intend to trample down the con¬ 
stitution of Louisiana. Kind and considerate statute! 

The statutes of Louisiana, after providing, first, that the names of 
all persons entitled to vote in the organization of the Legislature 
shall be enrolled by the secretary of state, after providing that no 
man, whoever he may be, unless he has been returned by the return¬ 
ing board and his name inscribed on that roll, shall take part in the 
organization, by a supplemental act declares these words: 

For the purpose of facilitating the organization of their respective bodies, the 
secretary of the senate and the chief clerk of the house of representatives shall 
hold over and continue in office from one term of the General Assembly to another, 
until their successors are duly elected and qualified. 

So says our congressional statute, speaking of the House of Rep¬ 
resentatives of the United States. So says a statute passed after the 
turmoil of 1839 and more recent turmoils had warned us of the dan¬ 
ger of unrestrained modes of organization; and all political parties, 
all the representatives of forty-six States and Territories, have 
bowed in obedience to the statute, no matter how high party spirit 
ran. Yet now comes the Senator from Ohio to tell us that a statute, 
equivalent in its terms, is satisfied by a destructive and impotent 
construction, which the ingenuity of no man, and no caucus however 
eager or desperate ever dared to suggest. 

No, Mr. President, the statutes of Louisiana required the organiza¬ 
tion of that house to be made in one way, and permitted no other 
way known among men. It was so written; and persons not author¬ 
ized, contestants, claimants, or not, were strangers without the sem¬ 
blance of right to intrude or take part. Such persons, five or fifty, 
acting in defiance of law, were an unlawful assembly; and if thoy 
occupied the place set apart for members returned, at the time when 
the law required organization to take place, and acting with a com¬ 
mon intent, by turbulence, disorder, and fraud, prevented a lawful 


19 


organization, they were breakers of the peace and rioters. Such per¬ 
sons, so acting, were trespassers and wrong-doers, at every step, banded 
together to commit a misdemeanor, and it was lawful for the proper 
authority to quiet or expel them. In such a case as I have supposed, 
this was the prerogative of the body whose privileges were invaded; 
it was, when the public peace was broken, also the right of the 
magistracy of the State, and of those lawfully summoned to aid. 

Thus far I have affirmed nothing of what in fact took place in the 
iustance before us. Let me now come to that. On the 4th of Jan¬ 
uary, at noon, the hour and place appointed, came one hundred and 
two members of the Legislature of Louisiana returned as members 
of the house. Fifty-two were of one party; fifty of the other. Mr. 
Cousin, a returned member, did not come. He was kidnapped ; he 
was abducted. He was abducted because he was a member. I use 
these words conscious of their import. I use them in the presence of 
all the testimony, from whatever quarter, which has been laid before 
ns. I repeat that Mr. Cousin, a republican member of the Legisla¬ 
ture, was kidnapped and abducted becauso he was a member. Ho 
was kidnapped by a trick which prostituted the forms of law to an 
unlawful purpose. He was arrested under pretense of embezzlement; 
under charge of having embezzled three dollars two years before. 
He was seized and carried by steamboat and otherwise into a distant 
locality; he was thrust into concealment in the hold of a steamboat; 
he was told that the whole purpose in seizing him was to prevent his 
being present at the organization of the Legislature. He was told 
that he should not see or speak to anybody; bust that if he would be 
quiet till the Legislature had organized he should not be hurt; and 
finally when the Legislature had organized as was supposed, he was 
set free, the men who abducted him going with him to a magistrate, 
and one of them, Mr. Picayune Smith, signing a recognizance—a 
recognizance to answer to a charge that two years before, while col¬ 
lector of taxes, which he was for only two days, he had embezzled 
three dollars. In violation of constitutional right, in violation of 
parliamentary and legislative privilege, in derogation of the funda¬ 
mental principles of our system of government, as a step in a con¬ 
spiracy to dominate a Legislature, this man was arrested and pre¬ 
vented from going to his seat to utter the voice of the constituency 
which confessedly had elected and commissioned him to speak for it. 
Who has risen on the other side of the Chamber to denounce this act 
of lawlessness and baseness ? I may not properly refer to the pro¬ 
ceedings of the other House of Congress, but the newspapers inform 
us that a special committee has been raised to inquire whether a 
person invited to be a witness before a committee, a person who had 
testified and been discharged, could be sued for defamation of char¬ 
acter, or prosecuted by a fellow-citizen. So sensitive, if we may 
believe the public journals, is the House of Representatives touching 
its privileges and the privilege of those protected by its ajgis, that a 
special committee inquires whether a discharged witness may be prose¬ 
cuted by a fellow-citizen. Here is a man not summoned as a witness, 
but elected to a legislature. The time has come for him to take his seat. 
The division between parties is so nearly equal, that not possibly, but 
probably lias weight may make the scale kick the beam; and political 
conspirators, plotting the overthrow of law, kidnap him, carry him 
away to a remote place, hold him by force, for the avowed purpose of 
impairing the legislative force on one side, for the avowed purpose of 
controlling and stifling legislative action; and in the American Sen¬ 
ate no democratic Senator rises to denounce or reprobate the proceed- 


20 


ing. The Senate rings with denunciation, but it is all of those whose 
rights were trodden under the feet of violence and fraud. 

'The Senator from Ohio says that he has in the past told these 
people at the South they were doing wrong and they ought to stop. 
Yes, Mr. President, but precept and example must be thorough and 
consistent to be efficacious. .James Buchanan disapproved of seces¬ 
sion, but he said he did not know any way to prevent it or put it 
down, and that secessionists had great reason for what they did. 
He said there was an idea that troops could act as a posse for a mar¬ 
shal to be sure, but in South Carolina the marshal had resigned, 
and therefore there was no marshal, and how could a posse act, and 
what could troops do without a marshal ? The democracy of the 
North, some of them, said that secession was objectionable. Does 
any man believe that the people of the South would have waged a 
bloody issue had they been made to feel that the democracy of the 
North, uniting with the republicans of the North, would present one 
grim, undivided front, united to the bitter end in the purpose that 
the Republic should live and rebellion should die t Who believes 
this ? Who believes that eight million people, an agricultural peo¬ 
ple, without skilled labor, without diversified industry, without fac¬ 
tories, without rolling-mills, without resources, would have waged a 
bloody war against twenty-one million of united people possessing 
workshops, rolling-mills, factories, skilled labor, diversified indus¬ 
tries, and all the means to conquer with beyond any people of any 
country or of any age ? Who believes that men in the other House of 
Congress would have said, as more than one who hears me heard them 
say, that the confederate troops would be paid with coin from the 
Boston banks, and that they would water their horses in the Hudson 
and the Saint Lawrence? Who believes that such wild expectations 
would have led the South into the red sea of war, had it been known 
that the democracy of the North, as one man, wedded in solemn wed¬ 
lock to the flag and the Government, would stand shoulder to shoulder 
till rebellion was trampled to the dust ? 

I know that Mr. Buchanan, and others, talked in a deprecating way 
about rebellion. I know that now democratic Senators with exten¬ 
uating holiday and lady terms deprecate assassination. The Senator 
from Ohio speaks of inhuman butcheries and burnings as “ homicides 
not authorized by law.” Is that the terse vigor which will make 
desperadoes halt and quail ? No, sir. If you would discountenance a 
desperate brutal man in acts of violence, you must not incite him by 
encouraging his passions, by exaggerating his grievances and invent¬ 
ing new ones for him, you must not picture in lurid colors his imagi¬ 
nary wrongs, you must not denounce the law he violates, and the 
authorities he defies, you must not tell him he is a victim of tyranny. 
When you have done all these things, it is of little avail to add that 
as a general rule you think sin is sinful. If violence in the South is 
to be rebuked and discouraged by those having the ear and the con¬ 
fidence of the agitators, it cannot be by clogging the wheels of law¬ 
ful authority, by heaping opprobrium on all the ministers of law, by 
heaping maledictions on the laws of Congress, by insisting that what¬ 
ever is is wrong, and by stirring up strife, and inflaming all the dis¬ 
content in the hearts of those who brood in baffled bitterness. 

Let me return to the narrative. 

Mr. Cousin, I say, did not appear. A man whose appearance re¬ 
sembled a member of the Legislature was shot in the street on the 
night of the 3d of January. His resemblance to a republican mem¬ 
ber, cost him his life. It seems to have been something such a case 


as that narrated by the count in “ Charles O’Malley ‘’—a noted duelist, 
who, as my friend from Illinois [Mr. Logan] said the other day, used 
to go gunning after other people. He wrote a letter one day to a 
friend at the breakfast-table and said, “I was out before breakfast 
this morning and shot a fellow in the knee, but he turned out to be 
the wrong man.” [Laughter.] Somebody went out after tea and 
shot a man down in the street, but, although he looked like a re¬ 
publican member, it turned out to be the wrong man. 

There came also Mr. Vigers, the clerk, with the roll made by the 
secretary of state, as required by law. The roll bore the names of 
one hundred and two persons, and bore the name of no other person 
who was present. This roll was conclusive; it was final. The fifty- 
two republicans had agreed on Mr. Hahn for speaker; the democrats 
on Mr. Wiltz. If the law had its course, Mr. Hahn must be chosen. 
The law not only required Mr. Vigers to call the roll—but to preside, 
and count and declare the votes of those on that roll. The presiding 
officer to be chosen, and the only one known to the law, was a speaker, 
and he must be elected by a majority of those on the roll and voting, 
being those returned as members. Suddenly, Mr. Wiltz having sta¬ 
tioned himself within reach of Mr. Vigers, the clerk, a motion was 
made to declare Mr. Wiltz temporary speaker, an officer unknown 
to the law. Most of the accounts say that only the affirmative was 
put, not the negative; but this omission did not injure avoid pro¬ 
ceeding; and, amid a roar of voices, Mr. Wiltz, without waiting for 
the announcement of the vote, seized the chair and pushed Mr. Vigers 
from his ifiace by force. Instantly another motion and a continued 
roar brought forth a temporary clerk, another officer without exist¬ 
ence in law. A like proceeding produced a sergeant-at-arms, and a 
corps of deputies who had been foisted into the hall as bystanders. 

“A whistle garrisoned the glen ! ” 

Instantly these men displayed gilded and printed badges of office, 
and several of them were at once recognized as captains of armed 
bands which only three, months before had shot down citizens and 
police, and seized the government and archives of the State. Protests 
were made, and disregarded. The yeas and nays were repeatedly 
demanded by more than the number required by the constitution, 
but they were refused and shouted down. 

I stop here to remark upon a passage in the argument of the Senator 
from Ohio, [Mr. Thukman.] The honorable Senator said that the 
yeas and nay 3 could not be called pending the proceeding, because the 
house was not organized, and he referred to what took place in the 
House of Representatives of the United States in 1839. The Journal of 
the House in 1839 shows expressly that no refusal of the yeas and nays 
ever took place save in one condition of facts. The presiding officer, 
before the roll was made (there being then no such statute as there is 
now and as there is in Louisiana,) there being no roll completed, said, 
“Without a roll, we cannot call the roll; without a list for yeas and 
nays, we cannot call the yeas and nays.” And when on the 11th of 
January the roll had become substantially completed, the first de¬ 
mand for the yeas and nays was listened to, and the yeas and nays 
were ordered, says the Journal—I give its language—“by general 
consent.” And yet because there was no statute requiring a roll to 
be made, because there was no roll in existence, because the very con¬ 
dition-precedent, the very case which we have here in hand, was 
absent there, the Senator from Ohio cites that as a precedent to jus¬ 
tify what was done in New Orleans, when the reason, the only reason 
given in 1839, shows conclusively the wantonness and usurpation of 
this Louisiana proceeding. 


The Senator from Ohio reminded us of a legal maxim, ignorantia 
non excusat legem. I know the law does not excuse ignorance—it 
seems a hard rule, and yet it seems as hard for lawyers as for others. 
When listening to the law as laid down to us sometimes of late, I 
have been moved to doubt whether soldiers are likely to get wrong 
more than lawyers bred, in judging of legal right and wrong. Party 
prejudice, seems more blinding sometimes than ignorance—much 
learning seems yet to make men mad. My honorable friend from 
Ohio stated that the yeas and nays could not be called because the 
body was not a “ house;” no organization having been effected; and 
yet he argues that at that moment of time, this inchoate body was 
“house” enough to pass upon the rights of members to sit, to over¬ 
rule the statute, to import five men not on the roll and to seat them. 
I think that a body which is “house” enough to pass upon claims to 
seats, must be “ house” enough to call the yeas and nays. 

Mr. THURMAN. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New York 
yield to the Senator from Ohio ? 

Mr. CONKLING. I beg my friend not to insist unless he thinks I 
misrepresent him. 

Mr. THURMAN. You have done it. 

Mr. CONKLING. Then of course I yield. 

Mr. THURMAN. I was speaking of the house before the organi¬ 
zation was completed, and speaking of it at that time, I said that 
there was no organized house to call the yeas and nays. I was not 
speaking of the house after the election of Wiltz as permanent speaker, 
for after that the yeas and nays were called whenever they were de¬ 
manded. 

Mr. CONKLING. Mr. President, the honorable Senator did main¬ 
tain, and the facts and his argument required him to maintain, that the 
yeas and nays could not be ordered because the house was not so 
organized as to permit its being done, and in the same breath he did 
argue that at the same time, for it was the same time, it was lawful 
to seat men who had in my opinion no more right to act or vote than 
they had to take part in the deliberations of the Senate or the Supreme 
Court of the United States. The Senator facetiously referred to mo 
to illustrate his argument. He said “ Why the Senator from New York 
came here once and he had no credentials; and the honorable Senator 
from Maine [Mr. Hamlin] moved that he be admitted, and the Senate 
said 1 amen.’ ” Yes, “ the Senate ” said 1 amen,’ because there was a Sen¬ 
ate to say ‘amen/ and no statute stood in the way. In the case in 
Louisiana there was no “ house ” to act or say ‘ amen ’—no house 
according to the Senator that was even “ house ” enough to call the 
yeas and nays, and a statute forbade any one to say ‘ amen.’ The 
Senator from Ohio speaking of the Senator from New York said “ he 
was like the foolish virgin that had no oil in her cruse.” The Senator’s 
scripture is as bad as his law. The woman with the cruse was a 
widow woman, and she always had oil—that was her strong point, 
[laughter;] and I say to the Senator “ Search the Scriptures,” “ Search 
the Scriptures.” If anything can regenerate your politics and correct 
your law, that will do it. [Laughter.] 

Mr. President, under color of this illegal temporary organization, 
five or eight men were declared members who had and could have 
no more right to sit and vote at that time than they had to mingle 
in the government of a foreign State. Many of the members at¬ 
tempted to withdraw and escape; they were seized and made prisoners 
by badged jailers, and knives and pistols wore brandished to Gompol 


23 


them to submit. With the votes of those thus illegally and violently 
imported, and without the votes of the legal majority, Mr. Wiltz was 
next declared permanent speaker, and in like manner the whole 
organization was declared permanent. 

I pause here a moment to count up results so far. The whole of 
this so-called organization styled “ temporary,” no matter how stood 
the vote, was void, and in defiance of law; but waive that for a 
moment ; suppose it had been lawful to elect a temporary speaker; 
suppose it had been lawful to refuse and shout down the call for the 
yeas and nays; suppose it had been lawful to ignore the old clerk 
and his function, and to snatch it from him; suppose all this, and how 
can it be that Wiltz was elected? Who voted for and carried his 
election ? Did the authorized members, and they only, vote ? If so, 
we know the majority was against Wiltz. Did he receive a majority? 
If so, we know that persons voted who the law said should not 
vote and whose votes were worse than void. Iu any aspect, the 
contrivance by which Wiltz seized the chair was just as void, just as 
much a color and a sham, as if he had assumed it by a wave of his 
hand. Here is one thing fixed: fifty men could not outvote fifty- 
two. To prove that they could, I think would dizzy the arithmetic 
even of the Senator from Ohio. My honorable friend from Vermont 
[Mr. Edmunds] reminds me that the fifty were democrats and that 
democrats are prolific in voting. [Laughter.] 

The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] thus confesses and avoids 
this point: 

The Kellogg party may have been deceived as to their numbers, and outwitted 
by the defection in their own ranks, or by the superior parliamentary skill and 
knowledge of their opponents; the organization may have been perfectly regular 
or it may have been in some degree irregular and open to criticism; but it is cer¬ 
tain that it was quiet, that it was peaceful, and unaccompanied by any threat or 
act of violence on the part of any conservative member. When I say that I mean 
that it was unaccompanied by any show of that “ domestic violence ” which is 
spoken of in the Constitution, which gives the President of the United States the 
right to interfere, and there was no pretext for the existence of anything capable 
of being termed “ violence ” on the part of the one hundred and one members of the 
Legislature so convened. 

There is a statement of a great many things that might have been. 
The difficulty is that none of these things were. Kellogg, it turns 
out, was not deceived, or the Kellogg party, as to their numbers. 
They were not outwitted by defection. It is true that bribery, rank 
and brazen, was attempted, as is stated to us by Michael Hahn and 
fifty-one other members of the Legislature. It is true that money by 
thousands was offered to republican members iu order that it might 
be fulfilled that there was defection in the Kellogg ranks. But the 
bribes were spurned; and the men to whom they wore offered stood 
true. It was not domestic violence—well “domestic violence” is 
not the chief question—and, says the Senator in effect, Wiltz and the 
102 were peaceable. Yes, they were peaceably conspiring as accom¬ 
plices with five intruders; and with them they trampled law and 
right and peace under foot; but 

“Their ways were ways of pleasantness, and all their paths were peace.” 

Again, what shadow of right had Wiltz and his confederates to 
assault and detain by force, and menace with deadly weapons, mem¬ 
bers who chose to leave the room ? Was it not a bald breach of the 
peace and a breach of privilege? Tho honorable Senator from Ohio said 
yesterday that he would put a question to me. I put to him as a 
lawyer, as one who reveres the profession ho adorns, tha question 
whether it was not a breach of the peace, a violent iofraotioa of law, 


J 


> 


24 

by main force, even without deadly weapons, to imprison and restrain 
men who chose to rise, being members, and move from their seats be¬ 
yond the limits of the room in which they were held? I know that a 
legislative “house” may by order compel the attendance of its mem¬ 
bers ; but here there w r as no house. The “ house ” may compel the at¬ 
tendance of its members. Here there was no house, says the Senator 
from Ohio, no house with vigor enough to call the yeas and nays. No 
order had been made to send for members; and yet badged jailers, 
brandishing knives and pistols, vi ct armis, in the language of the law, 
lay hold of members of the Legislature, make them captives, and by 
terror and physical duress compel them to submit. 

Still further, was it not riotous, by turbulence and trick, by tramp¬ 
ling law under foot, by introducing men not returned, by armed janis¬ 
saries, by violence and deadly weapons, to prevent a lawful assembly, 
whether of a court, a legislature, or a common council, from organiz¬ 
ing as the law required I 

Let me complete the recital of facts. 

Wiltz an ex-mayor, who might be supposed by De Trobriand and 
the two privates who afterward attended him, to know the duty of 
soldiers to act as a peace posso, on motion adopted by the body, ap¬ 
pointed a committee to wait on the military and request their inter¬ 
vention. Here I quote from the memorial sent hero by fifty-two 
members of the Legislature, including Michael Hahn, with whom 
my friend from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] and I served in the House of 
Representatives and we know him to be a man of candor and re¬ 
spectability : 

About the time of the withdrawal of the republican members of the house, Mr. 
"Wiltz gave or caused instructions to be given to the persons assuming to be ser- 
geants-at-arms not to allow any one to pass out of or to enter the house. Great com¬ 
motion at once ensued, and quite a number of knives and revolvers were drawn and 
displayed in a threatening manner. Most of the republican members had already 
left the room, amid great confusion, when Mr. Dupre, of New Orleans, (democratic 
member,) moved that the speaker be requested to call on the United States troops 
to preserve the peace of the house. The motion prevailed, and a committee, of 
which Mr. Dupre was appointed chairman, was appointed to wait on General De 
Trobriand, and request the interference of the United States troops to preserve the 
peace. In a short time the committee returned, accompanied by General De Tro¬ 
briand and staff. Upon the appearance of General De Trobriand on the floor loud 
applause came from the democratic side of the house. • 

They called I say upon the troop's of the United States, and re¬ 
quested their intervention. With this committee of five as ushers to 
bow them in, Do Trobriand and his staff entered the legislative hall 
and the hall rang with democratic acclamations. Wiltz avowed the 
dependence of himself and his followers on military aid, and protested 
their inability to maintain themselves or maintain peace, and re¬ 
quested the general to quell bystanders, including the police. Here 
I refer to page 2 of the memorial sent up by the “ conservative ” 
members, that is the democrats : 

In the moan while, during the proceedings in the house, an additional number of 
police, with a crowd of disorderly persons, entered the lobby and engaged in men¬ 
acing altercation with the sergeant-at-arms and hi3 ten assistants. Finding that 
the sergeants-at-arms were contending w ith the mob, the speaker endeavored to 
procure the attendance of addition sergeants-at-arms. About one o’clock p. m. the 
disturbance in the lobby grew serious and a conflict was imminent. 

This memorial establishes out of the mouth of the democrats that 
turbulence occurred between the police and other persons, and a vio¬ 
lent outbreak was imminent. This, General De Trobriand quelled, by 
speaking to those who knew and felt his power to enforce his words j 
and then the man holding the speaker’s chair by fraud and usurpation, 
and standing on broken laws, in the name of Louisiana laid his thanks 


25 

at the feet of an officer in his uniform, and the fullness thereof, with 
his sword by his side, which seems so profoundly to have impressed 
the honorable Senator from Missouri, [Mr. Schurz.] 

When this was over, speaking in the presence of this body which 
could not call the yeas and nays, which had not vigor enough for 
that, but which had vigor enough to defy and trample upon the laws 
and the constitution of Louisiana,—this usurping speaker told Do 
Trobriand that he thanked him because ho had prevented bloodshed 
which was imminent. On this point I refer to page 4 of the memo¬ 
rial of Michael Hahn and his fifty-one colleagues: 

General De Trobriand, in substance, (the committee being unable to get tbe ex¬ 
act words,) asked Mr. Wiltz whether it was not possible for him to preserve order 
and keep the peace without calling upon him as a United States officer. Mr. Wiltz 
replied that it was impossible; that he had already instructed his sergeant-at-arms 
to do so. General De Trobriand then took action in the matter, and quiet was re¬ 
stored with little trouble. Mr. Wiltz then assured General De Trobriand that his 
coming had prevented bloodshed, and, as your committee is reliably informed, on 
motion, thanked him in the name of the General Assembly of Louisiana for his 
prompt response to the summons of the house, and the general retired. 

Meanwhile, a majority of the legal members, fifty-two in number, 
when they could gain their freedom, repaired to the governor, and by 
written petition informed him that fraud and violence had taken 
possession of their hall, and called on him as the chief magistrate of 
the State to put them in possession and cause lawless intruders to de¬ 
sist. Thus notified and thus summoned, the governor requested aid, 
and the men he asked were soldiers. These men, to the number of 
three, went into the hall, and doing no violence, insisted that five men 
who had no right to vote or to prevent an organization should take 
their places among the spectators. General De Trobriand also insisted 
that fifty two members of the house whose election the Senator from 
Ohio does not deny, fifty-two members who stood inscribed upon the 
roll, should bo permitted to re-enter that hall of legislation. Why 
did General De Trobriand include that among his acts ? Because by 
the order of Wiltz, abetted by the men over whom he presided, includ¬ 
ing the intruders, the armed janissaries with gilded lapels, shut tho 
doors in the face of these fifty-two members when they sought to come 
in. Thus the majority were barred out by force; and it was De Tro¬ 
briand who alone had the potency to compel the doors to be opened. 

The honorable Senator from Ohio, with that naive and picturesque 
smile which sometimes lights up his face, turns I see to a friend as if 
he deemed, this statement a romance. I beg to refer him to page 5 
of the memorial of Michael Hahn and others, where he may read: 

When the members returned to the hall, following General De Trobriand, at 
his request and under his protection, and attempted to follow him through the door, 
the sergeant-at-arms at the door, at the order ot Mr. Wiltz, closed the door in their 
faces and forcibly prevented them from entering; and they were not allowed to 
enter until the attention of General De Trobriancl was called to the fact; and at his 
order the republican members were admitted. 

The five intruders were caused to take places among the by¬ 
standers. The honorable Senator talked about “the lobby.” Pray 
what does he understand “ the lobby ” to have been ? The room was 
all one room, as this is. The lobby was that place upon which tho 
Senator’s hand would rest were he to allow it to hang from tho back 
of his chair. Nothing separated the lobby from the body of tho hall 
but a frail railing, not such a one as stood here once, and which on 
the motion of the honorable Senator was removed, because his con¬ 
stituents hung upon it and talked so loud as to divert him from his 
senatorial meditations; not so firm a barrier as that, but as I am told by 
the Senator familiar with it, a frail, low railing making only a visi- 


26 


ble line of demarkation between one part and another part of one and 
the same room. I have read somewhere that these intruders were 
cast into the streets. No, Mr. President, they were retired as my friend 
before me would retire if in place of sitting where he does, he were 
to sit upon one of the sofas sometimes allotted to the most honored 
guests of the Senate. 

This done, all members stood again where the law found them at 
first; a lawful organization could have been effected at once, but the 
vote would stand 52 to 50. There was the rub. In view of this fact, 
the fifty who had just been first the jailers of their colleagues, and 
then had shut them out, would not vote, would not stay while others 
voted, and so they went out; of course to break up a quorum and 
frustrate the law. But it was all peaceable revolution. 

This is by no means the whole history even of that day. The sen¬ 
ate of Louisiana was in existence, an organized body confessedly legal. 
It held over from the previous year, and all its officers were chosen 
and installed. It was ready to proceed to business. It was its duty 
to meet at the same hour with the house. It was the duty of all its 
members to be present. But every democratic senator absented him¬ 
self—what for ? Before the hour of meeting, and again after the dem¬ 
ocrats of the house withdrew, the democrats of the senate and of the 
house, were all in caucus together,—an odd proceeding considering the 
surroundings, and considering that there was no lawful joint work to 
do. Some of the accounts inform us that these senators were pri¬ 
vately assembled in a room near by while their associates were cam¬ 
paigning in the house, and that two hook and ladder companies, with 
scaling apparatus, were among the appliances of legislation provided 
by these peaceably assembled and now indignant “ representatives of 
a sovereign State! ” The President says he is credibly informed that 
these proceedings were part of a premeditated plan to wrest the State 
government from those who held it. Eye and ear witnesses relate that 
it was admitted while the scene was passing, that the democratic mi¬ 
nority of Statesenators intended to organize a seceded senate, and join 
the minority-usurped house in recognizing as State officers the men 
who only three months before had led a bloody revolution in which 
many men had been shot down like dogs—a revolution waged under a 
proclamation issued by Penn, who had beent he candidate for lieuten¬ 
ant-governor on the democratic ticket. 

This conglomerated plot, this wretched conspiracy, set on foot by 
men whose very existence testifies to the laxity of law, is justified as 
a lawful and sacred proceeding. The honorable Senator from Ohio 
makes the acquisitions of a long life pay tribute to an effort to en¬ 
velop it in a daze and glamour in which its ugly features may be 
hidden. 

To what lawful interference and authority is such an affair sub¬ 
ject? That is the question now presented to us. 

We are asked to believe that such tumult and such disorder in any 
case, however clear or forcible, is above and beyond the power which 
may lay hands on all other disorders. The place being a legislative 
hall, and men duly returned being among the actors, law-breakers 
are secure from touch. They stand on holy ground. There, the feet 
of magistrates may not tread; there, a posse may not go; there, 
violence is in its sanctuary. The legal argument comes to this, be¬ 
cause an attempt to test the case by all the particulars of fact which 
exactly measured its degree, involves minute examination of details 
beyond our reach. The question is one of jurisdiction, The juris¬ 
dictional elements are said to be the place and the official character 


of those concerned. The actors being in part members of a Legisla¬ 
ture, and the matter in hand being the organization of a Legislature 
in a legislative hall, it is insisted that disorder is not, like disorder 
elsewhere, subject to discipline and restraint. 

Orderly or disorderly, peaceable or riotous, such persons in such a 
place are “a law unto themselves.” If knives and pistols are bran¬ 
dished, if men are imprisoned or assaulted, if physical duress is 
resorted to, if a majority is overthrown by fraud, by noise, by agility, 
by stratagem ; in short, if law be openly trampled under foot, still 
the proceeding is beyond the reach of external authority. The chief 
magistrate of the State—a civil magistrate, cannot touch it; no one 
can touch it. The governor and citizens must stand by and play the 
part of spectators at a dog-fight, and the upper dog and the under dog 
must tear each other until they fight it out. If right and peace and 
law go down in the grapple, and the conflict spread, still the sworn 
guardians of the peace must look on impartially like judges at a 
horse-race or umpires at a prize-fight. 

Mr. President, I do not believe this good morals, good law, good 
flense, or civilized reason. In discussing such a position, I dismiss the 
contested facts of a particular case. The question, I repeat, is one of 
jurisdiction, of right in the chief magistrate of a State, present at the 
locality, to interfere and suppress disorder in a legislative hall during 
an attempt to organize. The honorable Senator from Maryland [Mr. 
Hamilton] puts an unreal case adroitly thus: 

By what authority, I would ask that Senator, was the governor to aid in the or¬ 
ganization of the Legislature any more than that soldiery he called upon and who 
did it ? What, sir, has it come to this, I again ask that honorable Senator, that the 
governor of a State has a right to organize a Legislature, or to aid in the organiza¬ 
tion of a Legislature ? 

With a statement so perversely ingenious, it is hard to take issue. 
No one contends that a governor may organize or aid in organizing a 
Legislature. To so state the question is to use words to pervert ideas. 
The governor of a State has nothing to do with opening a court, 
with consecrating a bishop, with dedicating a church, with burying 
the dead; but if tu rbulence break out in a church, at a sepulcher, or in 
a court of justice, any civil magistrate has as much power to reduce 
it as if it broke out on a race-course, in a play-house, or a skating-rink. 
The civil authorities in free Switzerland have nothing to do with 
baptizing children ; but the other day when children were baptized 
in Geneva and turbulence broke out, not only the civil authorities, but 
the military authorities, laid heavy hand upon it. In all these cases, 
the right of the civil magistrate must hinge, not on the place, 
not on the consequence of the personages guilty, but on the breach 
of the peace. A court is a temple of justice aud of regulated liberty ; 
so is a Legislature; both are public places. If peace reigns there, it is 
the public peace. If violence seizes upon them, the public peace is 
broken. A State prison is a public place. The State prison three 
miles from Lincoln in Nebraska is a public building of that State. 
A dispatch of the 11th of January published in the Chicago Tribune 
informs us that the convicts there refused to submit; disorder broke 
out; and, adds the dispatch, “ Governor Furness has telegraphed to 
Omaha for United States troops and fifty soldiers are on the way.” 
These soldiers were not present at Lincoln. The governor was not 
present. He could not act on view. No call had been made upon the 
President of the United States. There was no “domestic violence ” in 
the language of the Senator from Delaware. The troops were not on 
the spot “ to aot, as police,” as democratic newspapers have just discov- 


28 


ered that DeTrobriand and his sta ff acted on the call of the usurping 
speaker. They were summoned from a distance of seventy miles in 
military array. . 

Mr. THURMAN. Will the Senator allow me to ask a question right 
there? 

Mr. CONKLING. Yes, sir. 

Mr. THURMAN. Does the Senator know of any law that authorized 
the governor of Nebraska to summon United States troops as a posso 
to put down an insurrection in the penitentiary, or that authorized 
the officer in command of the troops to obey any such summons? 

Mr. CONKLING. I am glad the humanity of parties goes so far 
that even the convicts in the penitentiary of Nebraska are not with¬ 
out somebody to speak for them. [Laughter.] These oppressed citi¬ 
zens have been caught and caged, while others not so good run at 
large, but the difference of condition makes little difference with 
principles of law or with their application. 

I will answer the Senator. Governor Furness in my opinion had 
no right to summon troops to reduce a tumult merely because the- 
locus was a prison, rather than a palace or a Bridge of Sighs. No, 
sir, the fact that those concerned were convicts, did not enlarge the 
authority of the governor to appeal to military force. Governor Fur¬ 
ness had no more right to summon soldiers to one scene of a breach of 
the peace than to another. This is evidently the opinion of the Sen¬ 
ator from Ohio also. The right of Governor Kellogg to appeal to sol¬ 
diers to stay lawless turbulence in a legislative hall, stands on the 
same ground as the right of Governor Furness to make the same ap¬ 
peal in respect of disorder in a prison. There is no legal distinction 
between the two cases. 

Now, having answered the Senator, I have a question for him. 
Where has the Senator’s constitutional sword been slumbering all the 
time since troops of the United States entered the State prison of 
Nebraska, and with their bayonets thrust down disturbers of the 
peace ? We have heard no flourish of constitutional trumpets—not 
a note even from the corypheus of the band. There has not even been 
any curdling of blood, nor one faint spasm of constitutional virtue. 
A governor, of his own mere motion, with lightning for his messenger, 
causes troops of the United States to proceed seventy miles from their 
post and make one of the buildings of a “ sovereign State”the thea¬ 
ter of the submission they forcibly compelled, and not a resolution of 
inquiry is offered, not a word of disapproval is spoken by the sleep¬ 
less watchers with the Constitution—the champions of State rights. 
Why is this ? Convicts cannot vote. Convicts are poor material to 
make favorite or fashionable martyrs of. It would be hard to fire 
the public heart for them, albeit their case is the same in the sight 
of the Constitution. Hit them again—they have no friends; save 
sympathy and outcry for offenders too numerous and too daring to be 
punished—waste no words on vermin, who, all told, could not carry 
one primary meeting. 

Mr. President, if there be a spot in any State, be it palace or hovel, 
exempt from visitation when a crime or breach of the peace occurs 
there, it is a spot not marked on the map, or so hidden or fenced 
about with physical barriers as to be inaccessible to ministers of law. 
The capitol building in a capital city, is not such a place. 

It is argued on a separate ground that acts such as are reported 
from New Orleans, are not amenable to municipal law, because done 
pending the process of organizing a legislative body. To be sure, 
the statutes of Louisiana were defied; but for this the Senator from 


29 


Maryland [Mr. Hamilton] makes curt apology. His defense, if not 
logical, is all that logic can make. He dispenses with the statutes 
altogether; he says the law was not binding and might be defied. 
Why? Because it had been enacted; because it stood unrepealed 
and unchallenged! This is odd, but it is the Senator’s reasoning. 
It was made, he says, by a previous Legislature. Of course it could 
not have been made by a future Legislature. The argument there¬ 
fore is that because it was the law, it was not the law! The Senator 
says: 

If the organic law, luhich is supreme, prescribes a mode, that mode m ust be observed, 
but nothing besides. * * * Just here, having in my eye the honor able Senator from 
Louisiana, [Mr. West,] who stated that if there was a legislative enactment prescrib¬ 
ing how a future Legislature should be organized, it could not be legally organized 
unless it folloioed the forms thus prescribed. I deny the legal conclusion that the 
Senator would attribute to any such legislative enactment. Such enactments for pre¬ 
caution's sake may be passed as tending to preserve order, but they can have no legal 
binding power upon an incoming Legislature. 

This is the gospel of peace preached by the law-abiding Senator 
from Maryland in behalf of the lamb-like complainants whose cham¬ 
pion he is. He does not contend for the right of a Legislature to 
repeal the acts of its predecessor. In this, as a general truth, all 
wmuld agree. He does not content himself with insisting that one 
house may resist and undo what both houses, and the whole law¬ 
making power, have done. This would be violent and revolutionary, 
but still it would fall short of his need. The stress of his case pushes 
him yet further, and he asserts that a minority of member's may, 
before the body is organized, before it has power to call the yeas and 
nays according to the Senator from Ohio, before it is a “house,” 
defy and disregard the statute laws of the State. Even this enor¬ 
mous pretension, was too small for the occasion. The constitution of 
Louisiana remitted to the statute law the mode of settling contested 
seats, and ordained that the yeas and nays should be entered on the 
journal at the call of two members upon any question. This too was 
trodden under foot; and all this wrong piled on wrong, is justified 
and glorified. 

Mr. President, I ask the attention of the Senate to a high authority 
touching the position, the power, and the relations held by the clerk 
of the old house on the 4th of January, to show the nullity of the trick 
by which an unauthorized person usurped the province of propound¬ 
ing questions, and unlawful questions to the body. Here is the report 
of a famous case, the case of the Commonwealth vs. Green and others, 
heard and decided in Pennsylvania in 1839. It was a quo warranto to 
test the right of Ashbel Green and others to certain offices to which 
they had been elected by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church. My honorable friend from Ohio, though somewhat mixed 
about cruses of oil, and other leading cases reported in the Scriptures, 
will have some respect for this case, because Andrew Jackson, whom 
he venerates, was so moved by the dissensions it treats of, that when 
asked what troubled him most, General Jackson answered “The di¬ 
visions in the Presbyterian Church!” 

The wars of religion have been among the best fought, and most 
astutely contested—so have the litigations of religion. This case is 
an example. It was tried and argued by some of the ablest men of 
their time, and they gave it their best endeavors. 

The questions involved were first tried before a jury. They were 
carried up and decided by the court in banc, when the court in 
banc had at its head Chief Justice Gibson, clarem et venerabile nomen. 

This case (4 Wharton, page 531) holds: That the General As- 


30 


sembly of the Presbyterian Church was not a corporation, or a quasi* 
corporation, and was not subject to the visitorial powers of the court 
of chancery ; but that it was vested with the attributes of legislation.. 
Lord Coke said that no simile holds good in everything. A still 
older authority says, “ no simile runs on all fours.!’ But the Senate 
will see between the occurrence in Louisiana and the doings here re¬ 
viewed, a striking similitude. I read from page 590: 

The moderator, or in case of his absence another member appointed for the pur¬ 
pose, opens the next meeting; * * * he is directed to hold the chair until a 

new moderator be chosen. 

I ask you to observe that the statute of Louisiana is more explicit 
than the language I now read, because here the provision does not con¬ 
tain the words “and qualified.” But the moderator of the previous 
session is to hold his office until a new moderator is chosen. Now I 
read the occurrence out of which the contest arose : 

Mr. Cleaveland then moved that Dr. Beman, of the Presbytery of Troy, be mod 
derator, or, as some of the witnesses say, that he take the chair— 

Just as there has been a little doubt whether in the Louisiana 
affair the motion was for temporary chairman or temporary speaker— 

The motion being seconded, the question was put by Mr. Cleaveland, and was 
carried, as the witnesses for the relators say t by a large majority, and by this they 
mean that a large majority of voices voted in the affirmative. The question was 
reversed, and, as the same witnesses say, there were some voices coming from the 
southwest comer of the church who voted in the negative. This is denied by the 
respondents. 

Dr. Beman. who was sitting in a pew the locality of v/hich has been described 
to you— 

I read from the charge of the judge— 

stepped into the aisle, and called the house to order. A motion was then made 
that Dr. Mason and Mr. Gilbert be appointed clerks. Thero being no others put 
in nomination, the question was put by the moderator, Dr. Beman, in the affirma¬ 
tive and negative, and there was a majority of voices in their favor. 

Dr. Beman then stated that the next business in order was the election of a mod¬ 
erator. A member nominated Dr. Fisher, and no other person being in nomina¬ 
tion, the question was put affirmatively and negatively, and Dr. Fisher was elected 
by a large majority of voices. There was no negative votes on this nomination ; 
several of the witnesses say he was unanimously elected. 

Dr. Beman then announced the election of Dr. Fisher, as moderator, and said he 
should govern himself by the rules which might be hereafter adopted. 

The case binged on the validity or nullity of these proceedings, 
which are but the “ counterfeit presentment ” of what happened in 
New Orleans. 

The judge charged the jury among other things in these words: 

It is the opinion of the court hat a member, although not an officer, is entitled to put 
a question to the house under such circumstances. 

The Senate will observe that the judge charged the jury, in sub¬ 
stance, that it was lawful to supersede the moderator who held over, 
and that another person miglitput a question, and that the vote on that 
question laid a foundation for an after-coming permanent organi¬ 
zation. But what said the court in banc speaking through Chief 
Justice Gibson ? 

To all questions put by the established organ , it is the duty of every member to re¬ 
spond, or be counted with the greater number, because he is supposed to have 
assented beforehand to the process pre-established to ascertain the general will; but 
the rule of implied assent is certainly inapplicable to a measure which, when jus¬ 
tifiable even by extreme necessity, is essentially revolutionary, and based on no pre- 
established process of ascertainment whatever. 

To apply it to an extreme case of inorganic action, as was done here, might work the 
degradation of any presiding officer in our legislative halls. * * * For thisu-eaaon, 
the choice of a moderator to supplant the officer in the chair, even if he were re¬ 
movable at the pleasure of the commissioner's, would seem to have been unconsti¬ 
tutional. 


31 


Bnt he was not removable by them, because he bad not derived his oflico from 
them, nor was he answerable to them for the use of his power. He was not their 
moderator. He was the mechanical instrument of their organization; and till that 
was accomplished, they were subject to his rule—not he to theirs, * * * and the 
reason is that the decision of such questions as were prematurely passed here, 
is proper for the decision of the body when prepared for organic action, which it 
cannot be before it is fully constituted and under the presidency of its own moderator, 
the moderator of the preceding session being functus officio. 

Many instances may doubtless be found among the minutes, of motions enter¬ 
tained previously; for our public bodies, whether legislative or judicial, secular or 
ecclesiastical, are too prone to forget the golden precept,—“ Let all things bo done 
decently and in order.” But these are merely instances of irregularity which have 
passed, sub silentio, and which cannot change a rule of positive enactment. * * * 
The title of the exscinded commissioners could be determined only by the action 
of the house, which could not be had before its organization was complete. 

Changing the illustration to the case before us, this authority holds 
that it was unlawful for anybody hut Vigers to propound a question 
before the organization was complete, and that all votes and all pro¬ 
ceedings and results under the usurped function of any other person, 
were void, and to be held utterly for naught. 

Mr. President, the five persons for whom and by whom these acts 
were committed are described a s peaceable. They blocked the wheels 
of government; they dominated and frustrated a legislature; they 
strangled the cardinal principle of our system, the right of a majority 
to rule; they stopped the breath of representative life; but we are 
told it was all peaceable. The lion would have lain down with the 
lamb, if the swallowed lamb would only have lain down inside of the 
lion and agreed with him. 

I heard the honorable Senator from Ohio who sits nearest me [Mr. 
Shermah] denounce and characterize the usurpation of Wiltz. I ask 
the Senate what act did Wiltz do in which every one of these five 
intruders did not aid and abet him ? In trespass, and in misdemeanors, 
all are principals. These five men appointed and incited the badged 
jailers who imprisoned members, who with brandished knives and 
pistols compelled members to submit. I ask the honorable Senator 
from Ohio, who put to me a question yesterday, was there an affray 
there ? 

Mr. THURMAN. Does the Senator want an answer to his question 
to me. I have about half a dozen noted. I think I shall have to take 
another time. 

Mr. CONKL1NG. My honorable friend from Ohio had one whole 
day. I might ask him— 

‘‘Insatiate archer, would not one suffice ? ” 

Mr. THURMAN. I only wish to know when the Senator turns 
around and addresses me, as he has done half a dozen times since I 
have been in, whether he expects me to respond at once ? 

Mr. CONKLING. Mr. President, when I speak of the law, I turn 
to the Senator as a Mussulman turns toward Mecca. [Laughter. ] I beg 
the honorable Senator to understand that I look to him only as I 
would look to the common law of England, the world’s most copious 
volume of jurisprudence. [Laughter.] 

I had ventured to inquire was there an affray there ? Were there 
riotous doings there ? Was there a breach of the peace there ? What 
is the regulation size of a breach of the peace ? What is the legal 
weight and measure of a breach of the peace? How many cubits 
high must it be? How many pennyweights must it weigh? Was 
there a breach of the peace there ? I read from the memorial of the 
conservative members—not democratic members; there are no demo¬ 
crats or republicans any more. The honorable Senator from Ohio 


buried the republicau party in oblivion yesterday by calling republi¬ 
cans “radicals;” and he put the democratic party out of fashion, 
because he always made obeisance to “ the conservative party.” Here 
is the conservative memorial: 

In the mean while, during the proceedings in the house, an additional number of 
police, with a crowd of disorderly persons, entered the lobby and engaged in men¬ 
acing altercation with the sergeant-at-arms and his ten assistants, rinding that 
the sergeant-at-arms were contending with the mob, the speaker, etc. 

Before these words, “ mob ” being one of them, die away, I inquire 
again, was there a breach of the peace in that room ? Will it not do, 
as to muscular requirement, that men were seized, imprisoned, and men¬ 
aced with deadly weapons, and terrorized by a turbulence and din 
until five of their assailants and captors repaired to the military for 
protection, and their usurping speaker declared himself and his jan¬ 
issaries and confederates helpless and afraid ? 

AVhat is a riot ? Here place comes in, not to exempt wrong-doers 
from liability, but to aid in defining and constituting their offense. 
That which in the fields, or even in the street, might not be a riot, may 
be an aggravated riot in a church, in a court-house, in a State-house— 
anywhere where public proceedings by law are required to take place. 

The same thing is true of time, of the public temper, the state of 
the community, recent riots that have occurred, threats in the air, 
murmurs of disorder, such as Sheridan describes. Let me read : 

During the few days in which I was in the the city prior to the 4th of January, 
the general topic of conversation was the scenes of bloodshed that were liable to 
occur on that day, and I repeatedly heard threats of assassinating the governor, 
and regrets expressed that he was not killed on the 14th of September last; also 
threats of the assassination of republican members of the house, in order to secure 
the election of a democratic speaker. 

Yes, sir, time and condition is of the very essence of the criterion 
by which to test the danger of turbulent proceedings. A match is a 
harmless thing. I light it here with a scratch, and its flame passes 
away in the air; but a match drawn in a powder-magazine may whelm 
all in a common ruin. So acts of violence in New Orleans are charac¬ 
terized and measured by the time, the temper, the situation; all these 
are the surroundiug circumstances by the light of which the affair is 
to be judged. But regardless of time or place, what, I repeat, is 
a riot ? A riot is a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by 
three persons or more, aiding each other with common intent in an 
unlawful purpose, which they execute with turbulence. The pur¬ 
pose need not be unlawful if so executed. The lines of such offenses 
have been clearly marked by high authorities. I take up at once 
three cases relating to breaches of the peace, one in a church, one in 
a theater, one in a political and legislative meeting—three cases in 
which the courts say that proceedings stox>ping far short of the fra¬ 
cas in New Orleans, were riotous, regardless of statutes—riotous by 
the common law, and indictable and punishable in “what was once 
free America”—I borrow again from the honorable Senator from Ohio. 
I refer first to 2 Campbell, page 358, the case of Clifford vs. Brandon. 
Clifford, a distinguished barrister, went to Covent Garden Theater. 
He with others took umbrage at the prices which there prevailed. He, 
with others, hissed the actors, hissed them to damn a play. My friend 
from Ohio, who treats us so often to similies and figures drawn from 
the stage, will understand how a play is “ damned.” Mr. Clifford and 
others hissed the play and disturbed the spectators. Mr. Clifford 
and others were seized by a ticket agent—how he was uniformed 
does not appear. This functionary seized Clifford and others, vio¬ 
lently removed them from the play-house, carried them through the 


33 


streets, and imprisoned them. An action was brought for false im¬ 
prisonment. The justification was that they were engaged in riotous 
proceedings. The case was heard before the court, and the judgment 
was delivered by Mansfield. 1 read first the syllabus of the case: 

Yet if a number of persons having come to the theater with a predetermined 
purpose of interrupting the performance, for this purpose make a great noise and 
disturbance, so as to render the actors entirely inaudible, though without offering 
personal violence to any individual, or diing any injury to the house, they are, in 
point of law, guilty of a riot. 

Mansfield says: 

But if any body of men were to go to the theater with the settled intention of 
hissing an actor, or even of damning a piece, there can be no doubt that such a de¬ 
liberate and preconcerted scheme would amount to a conspiracy , and that the per¬ 
sons concerned in it might be brought to punishment. If people endeavor to effect 
an object by tumult and disorder, they are guilty of a riot. It is not necessary, to 
constitute this crime, that personal violence should have been committed, or tliat a 
house should have been pulled in pieces. I am clearly of opinion that the scenes 
which have been described amount to a riot. How can it be said there was no 
terror ? Would any of the jury allow their wives or daughters to go to the theater 
during these disturbances ? 

Here is a case from North Carolina, reported in 4 De^ereux’s Re¬ 
ports, where a man went to a religious meeting and made grimaces 
and laughed; and when his rights came to be tested the court was 
confronted by the constitution of North Carolina, which guarantees 
to all their own religion, free from the thews and fetters of sects, 
guarantees to all the right, in a way no matter how unique or gro¬ 
tesque, to worship thier Maker by the signs and symbols and eccen¬ 
tricities which each may alfect. The court, wrestling with the immu¬ 
nities which thus surrounded the case, said what I shall read. The 
indictment ended with the words, “ against the form of the statute.” 
There was no statute punishing the offence, and the court said the cul¬ 
prit could be convicted at common law, although the indictment laid 
it as done against a statute. The court said that in North Carolina 
no statute punished such an offense, and then proceeded, speaking 
through Ruffin, chief justice: 

The offense is not charged as a nuisance, but as a specific misdemeanor, in 
itself. 

* * * * * * * 

I think the indictment sufficient. 

In the further view, that the exercise of religious worship calls together large 
multitudes, whose assembly is lawful, and a duty in a religious sense, and a public 
duty in the sense of the constitution, the disturbance of whom has an immediate 
tendency to bitter discords, the violent commotion of neighborhoods, and abrcach of the 
peace, I also think the indictment sufficient. (The State vs. Henry X. Jasper, 10 
North Carolina Iieports, Devereux’s Law, 324, 326.) 

I now take up a case coming from the State of Massachusetts, the 
case of the Commonwealth vs. lloxeij, 10 Massachusetts Reports, 385. 

The indictment set forth * * * that the defendant while the moderator was 
presiding in the meeting— 

A town-meeting authorized by law— 

and was receiving the votes for a selectman, with force and arms, intending as much 
as in him lay to prevent the choice of said selectman according to the will of the 
electors, and to interrupt the freedom of election, unlawfully and disorderly did 
openly declare that the old selectman should not be chosen, and attempted repeat¬ 
edly to take from the box, which contained the ballots of the electors, the votes of 
the electors: and so the jurors say, &c. 

The defendant pleaded guilty to the indictment, and moved in arrest of judg¬ 
ment ; “ because the said indictment purports to be founded upon a statute law of 
the Commonwealth; whereas there is no such statute in the State, making the facts 
set forth in the indictment an offense against the Commonwealth ; and because the 
facts set forth in the indictment do not amount to an offense at common law." 

3 N 


34 


What did tlic court say ? 

Tho tendency of the defendant's conduct was to a breach of the peace, and to the 
prevention of elections, necessary to the orderly government of the town, and due 
management of its concerns for the year. It is true that the common law knows 
nothing perfectly agreeing with our municipal assemblies. But. other meetings 
are well known and often held in England, the disturbance of which is punishable 
at common law, as a misdemeanor. In this Commonwealth, town-meetings are 
recognized in our constitution and laws : and the elections mado and the business 
transacted by the citizens, at those meetings, lie at the foundation of our whole 
civil polity. If then there were no statute, prohibiting disorderly conduct at such 
meetings, an indictment for such conduct might be supported. 

The criminal commissioners of England, commenting upon the case 
in 2 Campbell, say that Mansfield did not go far enough, that no vio¬ 
lence is necessary, that the whole offense is made out when lawful 
proceedings are baffled, and disorder rules the hour. 

Assuming that a breach of the peace occurred at the time in ques¬ 
tion, it was lawful for any magistrate to interpose and arrest it, ap¬ 
prehend the actors, and take all needful precautions against its con¬ 
tinuance and renewal. Precaution alone, opened a wide field. This 
was the right of any person, though a private citizen, holding a war¬ 
rant for the apprehension of the offenders. It was the right of any 
officer or magistrate, or of those he summoned, without warrant, not 
only to quell the disturbance but to apprehend the disturbers. I 
might cite many authorities to this, but no better exposition of the 
law is needed than that given in a charge to a jury by Judge King 
after the Philadelphia riots in 1844—Judge King who thirty years 
ago was nominated for justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. 

He says: 

An unlawful assembly, suck as I bave described, may bo dispersed by a magis¬ 
trate whenever be finds a state of t kings existing, calling for interference in order 
to the preservation of the public peace. He is not required to postpone bis action 
until the tmlawful assembly ripens into an actual riot. For it is better to antici¬ 
pate more dangerous results, by energetic intervention at the inception of a threat¬ 
ened breach of the peace, than by delay to permit the tumult to acquire such 
strength as to demand for its suppression those urgent measures which should be 
reserved for great extremities. The magistrate has not only the power to arrest 
offenders and bind them to their good behavior, or imprison them if they do not 
offer adequate bail, but he may authorize others to arrest them by a bare verbal 
command, without any other warrant; and all citizens present whom he may in¬ 
voke to his aid, are bound promptly to respond to his requisition, and support him 
in maintaining the peace. And a magistrate, either present or called on such an 
occasion, who neglects or refuses to do his utmost for the suppression of such un¬ 
lawful assemblies, subjects himself to an indictment and conviction for a criminal 
misdemeanor. When, however, an unlawful assembly assumes a more dangerous 
form, and becomes an actual riot, particularly when life or property is threatened 
by the insurgents, measures more decisive should be adopted. Citizens may, of 
their own authority, lawfully endeawor to suppress the riot, and for that purpose 
may even arm themselves, and whatever is honestly done by them in the execution 
ot that object will be supported by the common law. In the great London riots of 
1780, this matter was much misunderstood, as it clearly was with us. and a general 
persuasion prevailed that no indifferent person could interfere withoutthe authority 
of a magistrate, in consequence of which much mischief was done, which might 
otherwise have been prevented. 

[At this point, the honorable Senator yielded to a motion for ad¬ 
journment.] 


Friday, January 29, 1875. 

Mr. CONKLING. Mr. President, in the observations I had the honor 
to submit to the Senate yesterday it was my intent to set forth plainly 
several incidents in the scene enacted in New Orleans on the 4th of 
this month. 



35 


First of nil, however, I reminded you that the President of the 
United States was void of offense, free from complicity, a stranger to 
the whole proceeding, and unprepared for it until after it had passed. 

I also stated facts showing that General Sheridan was not in com¬ 
mand at the time, nor even a spectator of the affair in any of its parts. 

I recited the laws of Louisiana, constitution and statutes, deposit¬ 
ing certain powers exclusively with certain persons, and defining the 
mode, and the only mode of their exercise. I recited the flagrant acts 
of concerted lawlessness and violence by which those laws were trod¬ 
den under foot. I marshaled facts showing that the attempt of the 
minority to capture one house of the Legislature of Louisiana by 
stratagem and force, was not a design complete in itself, but a step 
in a plan to revolutionize the State government and wrest it from 
those who held it. 

When the adjournment occurred, the words of a court had been 
read in part, to inform us what a governor or civil magistrate present 
at the scene may do to quell public disorder. I refer once more to 
those words, in the hope of impressing them on the Senate. Says the 
court, speaking of a civil magistrate, of all civil magistrates from 
the highest to the lowest, and the governor is the highest civil mag¬ 
istrate in a State: 

He is not required to postpone his action until the unlawful assembly ripens 
into au actual riot. For it is better to anticipate more dangerous results, by ener¬ 
getic intervention at the inception of a threatened breach of the peace, than by 
delay to permit the tumult to acquire such strength as to demand for its suppres¬ 
sion those urgent measures which should bo reserved for great extremities. The 
magistrate has not only the power to arrest the offenders and bind them to their 
good behavior, or imprison them if they do not offer adequate bail, but he may 
authorize others to arrest them by a bare verbal command, without any other warrant; 
aiul all citizens present whom he may invoke to his aid, are bound promptly to 
respond to his requisition, and support him in maintaining the peace. And a mag¬ 
istrate, either present or called on such an occasion, who neglects or refuses to do 
his utmost for the suppression of such unlawful assemblies, subjects himself to an 
indictment and conviction for a criminal misdemeanor. 

To the same effect I may cite 1 Russell on Crimes, pages 799, 801,805. 

In the light of such authorities, it will hardly be denied that if in 
truth a breach of the peace, larger or smaller in dimensions, was pro¬ 
ceeding at the time and place in question, threatening to swell into 
greater proportions, the governor had a right to suppress and quell it, 
and to call others to liis aid in doing so. 

But the republican party, the President of the United States, and 
much of the residue of mankind, are threatened with destruction 
because those whom Governor Kellogg summoned, and those who 
responded, were soldiers, and soldiers of the United States—“ hire¬ 
lings” they were called. The Senator from Maryland [Mr. Hamil¬ 
ton] said they were “hired,” and withered them by adding that they 
received only “ eight dollars a month.” The words do not appear, I 
believe, in his printed speech; but they were among the liveliest he 
uttered. 

“Hirelings!” But for such “hirelings” there might not now be 
a Senate Chamber to echo with the eloquence of the honorable 
Senator from Maryland. But for these “hirelings” we might not 
now “ breathe the free air of a Republic.” It is certain that, but 
for such “ hirelings,” we should not breathe the air of a free Re¬ 
public. These “hirelings” have less place to rest their feet than 
the birds of the air or the beasts of the field. If they remain sol¬ 
diers they must be somewhere, and wherever they are, south of 
Mason and Dixon’s line, they come betwixt the wind and somebody’s 
nobility. If they doff their knapsacks, and with honorable dis- 


36 


charges in their pockets, and wearing the scars received on stricken 
holds, melt away into society and locate anywhere in one-Lalf the 
Republic, they are loaded with opprobrium; they are stigmatized 
with the epithets of “carpet-bagger” “scalawag,” “white nigger,” 
and the like. Their lot is hard. They have earned these reviling s 
in recent years. One political party never called soldiers “ hirelings ” 
until they were marshaled to trample down a rebellion which lifted 
its bloody hands to stab the Republic to the heart. It is a curious 
coincidence that hatred of soldiers blossomed out about the time they 
were hurrying to the burning battle-tields of the rebellion. It was 
not always so. The democratic party was once the soldiers’ party 
aud the war party. It applauded soldiers in former wars. It sighed 
.for new wars, for Cuba, and for conquest. But this was in “ what 
was once free America”—I quote the words of the Senator from 
Ohio; it was when slavery needed room to expand. The democratic 
party applauded soldiers when they dispersed Legislatures, when they 
thronged and overawed courts, and did other odious behests. 

In 1814, when Andrew Jackson ordered a military guard over both 
houses of the Legislature of Louisiana, when the governor of that 
State stationed military guards at the doors and shut both houses 
out of their chambers, believing that Jackson wanted them shut out 
when in truth he wanted them shut in; when at the same time Gen¬ 
eral Jackson put a habeas corpus in his pocket, and drove from his 
home aud his court the judge who issued it, the democratic party 
glorified Jackson, and made him President. 

When a democratic President, a democratic Secretary of War, and 
a military officer, at the point of the bayonet and the mouth of the 
cannon, on the 4th of July, 1856, dispersed and humiliated both houses 
of a Legislature, Congress and the country rang with democratic 
plaudits. This abominable proceeding fills a page in one of the most 
odious and revolting chapters in the history of human tyranny and 
wrong. 

Many into whose faces I now look remember the events in Kan¬ 
sas, and the scoffs and taunts with which they were belittled and 
denied. When violence, intrusion, and outrage, carrying the banner 
of slavery, stalked high-headed in Kansas, trampling law and right 
and life under foot, did the democratic leaders and the democratic 
press apologize for ruffians and homicides? Did the predecessors of 
these Senators apologize for crime ? Oh, no, they would have been as 
indignant as their successors are, had it been said that they apolo¬ 
gized for bloodshed in Kansas. They only sought, as Senators do now, 
to ,'au^h and sneer the subject out of court; they only sought to 
cov r the naked truth with an eclipse of denunciation, ridicule, and 
denial. “Bleeding Kansas!”—have you forgotten how that mock¬ 
ing motto flew at the mast-head of democratic papers? “Bleeding 
Kansas ” was the catch-word and by-word then, just as the “ Southern 
outrage business,” the “ Southern outrage mill” are now. Apology for 
crime and violence, Oh, no—Oh, no. Border ruffianism in Kansas was 
denied in this Chamber as southern ruffianism is denied now. It 
did not receive open, bald apology. The honorable Senator from 
Ohio, skillful and practiced as ho is, would not bo so rank and bung¬ 
ling, however he might feel, as to make open apology for brutal v:o • 
lence in his followers. The coarsest instinct would revolt at this— 
the homage which vice pays to virtue would rebel against it. 
Gross indeed must be the sense which would not sicken with 
satiety at the naked indecency of apology for murder unshaded even 
by a phrase or a blush. Drapery in such cases, is essential to effect. 


I 


37 


In 1853 border ruffianism and its diabolical work in Kansas was not 
the subject of apology more than are White Leagues aud masked 
riders now. Yet we cannot forget the tone of congressional discus¬ 
sions then, uor cau we restrain the exclamation how history repeats 
itself! 

Here is a cold record, the anuals of Kansas, compiled after the 
din and horrors it narrates had passed away. Here, and in many 
another book, it stands recorded that the election preceding the 
crowning wrong to which I flrst referred, was controlled almost en¬ 
tirely by residents of Missouri who came into Kansas in large bodies, 
took possession of the polls, drove away the regularly appointed 
judges of election, set up others to betray liberty and right, elected 
to office persons who were not and never had been citizens of Kan¬ 
sas, and committed other atrocities the details of which, are too dis¬ 
gusting to relate. 

Says the author— 

It is estimated that about five thousand Missourians, led on by men claiming res¬ 
pectability, and certainly occupying prominent positions, visited the Territory to 
take part in this nefarious transaction. The following extract is from the report 
of the congressional committee : 

By an organized movement, which extended from Andrews County in the north, 
to Jasper County in the south, aud as far eastward as Boone and Cole Counties, 
companies of men were arranged in regular parties, and sent into every council 
district in the Territory and into every representative district but one. The num¬ 
bers were so distributed as to control the election in each district. They went to 
vote, and with the avowed intention to make Kansas a slave State. They were gen¬ 
erally armed and equipped, carried with them their own provision and tents, and so 
marched into the Territory. 

Another paragraph in the same report, which gives a detailed statement of the 
outrages committed at this election, carefully gathered from the examination of 
witnesses under oath, asserts: 

The Missourians began to leave on the afternoon of the day of election, though 
some did not go home until the next morning. 

In many cases when a wagon-load had voted, they immediately started for home. 
On their way home they said if Governor Reeder did not sanction the election they 
would hang him. 

This unlawful interference has been continued in every important event in the 
history of the Territory. Every election has been controlled not by the actual set¬ 
tlers, i?ut by citizens of Missouri; and, as a consequence, every officer in the Ter¬ 
ritory, from constables to legislators, oxcept those appointed by the President, owe 
their positions to non-resident voters .—History of Kansas, by J. H. Gihon, pages 
33 and 39. 

Let me read two or three Jines from a democratic newspaper of that 
day, the Brunswicker, a Missouri paper: 

tYe learn, just as we go to press, that Reeder has refused to give certificates to 
four of the councilman and thirteen members of the house. He has ordered an 
election to fill their places on the 22d of May. This infernal scoundrel will have to 
be homped yet. 

The Legislature of Kansas attempted to meet on the nation’s birth¬ 
day, to meet quietly in the two legislative halls, and Colonel Sumner, 
commanding squadrons of cavalry, commanding a detachment of ar¬ 
tillery which trained its guns upon the doors, commanding men whose 
sabers and bayonets flashed in the sun, entered the building in which 
the Legislature had met, declared his act the most painful of his life, 
and then by force compelled the dispersal and degradation of the sen¬ 
ate and the house of representatives. So thorough were the prepara¬ 
tions, that Army surgeons attended and opened their cases of imple¬ 
ments more ghastly than the soldiers’ instruments of death. 

On the 7th of January, 1857, the day on which the Legislature of 
Kansas again met, the United States marshal, with troops at his back, 
arrested seven members of the Legislature, and approbation covered 
him. On the 15th of July, 1857, Governor Walker, of Kansas, by 


38 


proclamation ordered the citizens of Lawrence to desist from acting 
under their municipal charter, saying that if they did not obey he 
would use the troops of the United States to compel obedience. All 
this was the work of democrats, and to criticise it was treason to the 
party. 

At a municipal election here in Washington on the 1st of June, 
1857, under a democratic administration, United States marines from 
the navy-yard fired on a crowd, killing five and wounding seventeen; 
and we had not even “ an investigation into the affairs of the Dis¬ 
trict ! ” 

On the 27th of March, 1859, Governor Cumming, of Utah, protested 
against United States troops surrounding the court-house during the 
session of the court; but the heart of a democratic administration 
beat no response. 

In the autumn of 1861 General George B. McClellan, through Gen¬ 
eral Banks, arrested as many as he could of the Legislature of Mary¬ 
land, Maryland not being a State declared in insurrection; and the 
democratic party at the first opportunity strove to make McClellan 
President—President on a peace platform—a platform made by stick¬ 
lers for the Constitution who hurled the whole constitutional armory 
at the national authorities then grappling with the rebellion, and 
assailed Mr. Lincoln with all their hurtling arrows and all their viru¬ 
lent vocabulary. The democratic party always was the keeper of 
the Constitution. The Constitution all through the war was in the 
charge of the democratic party North and South; and the northern 
wing and the southern wing vie with each other now, as they did 
then, in the zeal with which they keep watch and ward over that sa¬ 
cred instrument! 

In the spring of 1854 a man was arrested in Boston for the crime of 
being black. By the order of a democratic President the Army and 
Navy swarmed around the spot, and Federal bayonets were thicker 
than tipstaffs in the court. The district attorney felt called upon to 
apologize: 

He desired to say that the United States soldiers were here in aid of the marshal 
to enable him to preserve order in this court and to execute the laws, and that they 
were summoned here as a part of the posse comitatus. 

Artillery practice took place in Court Square during the trial, and 
an army with banners and nodding plumes of the United States, car¬ 
ried a slave from the court to the wharf, and a revenue-cutter and 
soldiers of the United States steamed with him out to sea. 

John Brown was tried before a court of a sovereign State—a scowl¬ 
ing court, corraled with Federal bayonets ; and the gibbet on which 
he kissed a child and died, quaked with the tramp of Federal regi¬ 
ments and the rumble of Federal artillery. 

Mr. President, the posterity which shall read unmoved the story of 
a record so crimsoned with blood, so stained with tears, will not be 
kindled to indignation at De Trobriand and his two companions 
accosting rioters and bidding them desist. 

Yes, soldiers are hirelings ; Senators are hirelings; a great body of 
the American people are hirelings; but men do not forfeit their citi¬ 
zenship or their rights by becoming hirelings, not even by becoming 
soldiers, especially if they remain true to their oath and their flag. 

Soldiers are citizens. Military allegiance exempts soldiers from 
jury duty; it may exempt them from other duties in given cases; 
but their uniform does not deprive them of the immunities, the at¬ 
tributes, the rights, nor does it relieve them of the duties of other 
citizens. De Trobriand in his uniform, was none the less a citizen of 


39 


the United States, none tlic less a citizen of Louisiana, if Louisiana be 
still, as it was for many years, liis residence. Yet, it seems to be as¬ 
sumed, on one side of the Senate, that even if the exigency, in the 
presence of which Governor Kellogg stood, gave him the right as 
chief magistrate by verbal command to summon bystanders to quell 
disturbance, to arrest disturbers, and restore and maintain order, 
still no right permitted him to do what he did, because those he called 
to his aid, and who responded, were soldiers. 

This distinction between citizens may not have been clear to Gov¬ 
ernor Kellogg and to those who obeyed his summons. Had they been 
lawyers and searched the books for such a distinction they might 
ha ve lost the trail. Had they gone to the common law of England, 
the broadest page of jurisprudence, they would have found such a 
distinction conspicuously absent. Before most of them were born, 
the lord chief justice of England had denied and denounced such a 
distinction. To show this, I send to the Secretary “Wise on Riots,” 
a book of high authority, and asked him to read the passages marked. 

The Secretary read as follows : 

DUTIES OF THE MILITARY. 

The jealousy which has always been evinced, in this country of any approach to 
military government, was probably the foundation of the erroneous notion in 1780, 
that soldiers were powerless without the authority of the civil magistrates; and 
the surprise expressed in 1832, at that part of Lord Chief Justice Tindal’s charge 
which was specially directed to this subject, showed that the error was far from 
being extinguished. Mi*. Justice Holroyd had indeed stated, in Bedford vs. Birley 
3 Starkio N. It., page 101; see also Burdett vs. Abbott, 4 Taunton, page 401, that the 
military were citizens no less than soldiers; and intances occurred in the Luddit, 
disturbances of their acting alone, in accordance with what is unquestionably the 
law of this country; but never was it so clearly expounded as in the following ex¬ 
tract from that charge:— 

“And whilst I am stating the obligation imposed by the law on every subject of 
the realm, I wish to observe, that the laic acknowledges no distinction in this respect- 
between the soldier and the private individual. The soldier is still a citizen , lying un¬ 
der the same obligation, and invested with the same authority, to preserve the peace of 
the king as any other subject. If the one is bound to attend the call of the civil magistrate, 
so also is the soldier; if the one may interfere for that purpose when the occasion de¬ 
mands it, without the requisition of the magistrate, so may the other too; if the one 
may employ arms for that purpose, where arms are necessary, the soldier may do the 
same. Undoubtedly, the same exercise of the discretion, which requires the private 
subject to act in subordination to and in aid of the magistrate, rather than upon his 
own authority, before recourse is had to arms, ought to operate in a still stronger 
degree with military force. But, where the danger is pressing and immediate ; 
where a felony has actually been committed, or cannot otherwise be prevented ; 
and. from the circumstances of the case, no opportunity is offered of obtaining a 
requisition from the proper authorities —the military subjects of the king, like his 
civil subjects, not only may, but are bound to do their utmost, of their own authority, 
to prevent the perpetration of outrage, to put down riot and tumult, and to preserve the 
lives and property of thepeople." (Wise on Riots, 74, 75.) 

Mr. CONKLING. There, Mr. President, is the utterance of a great 
judicial magistrate announcing that citizens, in the military service 
or not, as preservers of the peace, stand on the same footing; and for 
more than the lifetime of men now living, such a distinction as is now 
contended for, has had no existence in Great Britain. Had Kellogg 
and the soldiers he summoned made search in American law books, 
their effort would have been scarcely more productive. I send to 
the Secretary the charge given by Mr. Justice King in the noted case 
to which reference was made yesterday, and ask him to read the 
marked passage. 

The Secretary read as follows : 

Those who love law and order should not shrink or hesitate in striking an honest 
blow for their protection, when threatened by lawless violence. When such a 
timid and feeble spirit prevails, the days of the Republic are numbered. This 
general duty, this universal obligation ,[extends to the citizen soldiers who, in common 


40 


with all other members of the community, are reqircd to be assistants in the mainte¬ 
nance of the public peace on the call of the civil magistrate. They are subject to the 
same penalties in case of neglect or refusal to appear, as any other citizen summoned 
by the sheriff. They do not, on such occasions, act in their technical character as 
military. When assembled, they are but part of the sheriff’s posse, and act in 
subordination to, and in aid of, that officer, who is the true and responsible chief of 
all forces summoned under his authority. If the soldiers act in any manner not 
authorized by law, they are amenable for such acts, not to the military but the civil 
law. In brief as to all rights and authorities, they stand on the same footing with the 
other citizens summoned by the sheriff, and composing with them a posse. (Whar¬ 
ton’s Criminal Law, seo. 2936.) 

Mr. CONKLING. I ask the Secretary to read also an extract from 
an opinion written on the 27th of May, 1854, by a democratic Attor¬ 
ney-General in reply to a letter from a democratic Secretary of War. 

The Secretary read as follows: 

These considerations apply as well to the military as to the civil force employed; 
for the posse comitatus comprises every person in the district or county above the 
age of fifteen years, (Watson’s Sheriff, 60,) whatever may be their occupation, 
whether civilians or not; and including the military of all denominations, militia, 
soldiers, marines , all of whom are alike bound to obey the commands of a sheriff ' or 
marshal. The fact that they are organized as military bodies, under the immediate 
command of their own officers, does not in anywise affect their legal character. They 
are still the posse comitatus. Opinion of Attorney-General Cushing of May 27, 
1856, Opinions of Attomeys-General, volume 6, page 473. 

Mr. CONKLING. Mr. President, loud outcry may scare forty mil¬ 
lion people with the fear that their liberties are in danger from an army 
of less than five-and-twenty thousand men, scattered in corporal’s 
guards over a continent. This may be. It may be that the three men 
in blue pantaloons who in New Orleans the other day accosted intruders, 
trespassers, and wrong-doers, and bade them change their seats from 
one place in a room to another place in the same room, should have 
been three other men dressed in other pantaloons. It may be so. Mr. 
Stoughton, who, although a democrat, can speak like a patriot and a 
jurist as he is, says he thinks it would have been more strictly regular 
had Governor Kellogg first called upon soldiers of the State of Louisi¬ 
ana, and they proving inadequate, had called upon soldiers of the 
United States. It may be so, I do not deny it. As I said before, it 
is not my purpose to justify Governor Kellogg or those who did his 
bidding. I do not pronounce him or them right or wrong. It is fair, 
however, to remind you that if Kellogg needlessly invoked the aid of 
soldiers, he may have been misled by the action of the democratic 
assemblage, over which Mr. Wiltz presided. He may have been mis¬ 
led by the fact that with a presiding officer who was an ex-mayor of 
the city of New Orleans, and who might be supposed to understand 
something of municipal law, with democrats, or as the honorable Sen¬ 
ator from Ohio now baptizes them “ conservatives,” present in large 
numbers, acting upon preconsidered deliberation, the troops of the 
United States had been sent for by committee, employed to quell riot, 
publicly thanked and cheered for their presence, and told they had 
prevented the effusion of blood. These proceedings were well calcu¬ 
lated to familiarize and impress all with the idea that De Trobriand 
and his companions were fit men to keep the peace on the occasion. 
At all events the example tends to shield the soldiers from the charge 
of turpitude and conscious wrong. I fear Wiltz and his conservative 
confederates will continue to mislead soldiers. I see that after the 
occurrence in question, addressing the President of the United States, 
Wiltz concludes by saying: 

And I urgently request and demand that they— 

That is, the troops of the United States, 
be ordered to restore the house to the position it occupied when they so interfered. 


41 


This conservative speaker, this type of the law-abiding spirit of the 
democratic party, thi3 man who incarnates the inspiration around 
him, even now, after the great organs of the party have joined in a 
chorus of denunciation of military interference, sends up to the Presi¬ 
dent a summons to march the military forces of the United States into 
a legislative hall and reseat him, Wiltz, that he may agaiu trample on 
the laws and the constitution he has sworn to support. 

I have said, and I repeat, that I am not trying the facts, in all their 
aggravations and mitigations, of the particular case before us. The 
evidence is not sufficiently here. I am looking only far enough to see 
whether the Senate and the country need go into paroxysms over the 
act of one State official, and of three other men enlisted or commis¬ 
sioned in the service of the United States. I am looking far enough 
to see whether it is really true that “ since the separation of the Col¬ 
onies from the mother country,” never did the American people stand 
in the presence of a crisis so awful; I do not stop to quote the words 
of the Senator from Delaware, but I give the substance of one of his 
statements. I am inquiring far enough to see whether it is true that 
the pillars of the temple are about to crumble, that civil liberty is 
about to vanish, that the great Kepublic of the world is about to fold 
its tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away. 

Mr. President, I have done with the one scene just enacted in the 
tragic drama of Louisiana. I turn to the history of that ill-fated 
State for the last few years, as a theme better wortUy the thought of 
the Senate than the fracas in the legislative hall. 

What is the excuse of the disturbers of Louisiana ? What is the 
apology for the unending commotion in which she has been kept ? 
The plea was made by the Senator from Ohio. It is that Kellogg was 
nothin truth elected but was falsely counted in. Suppose he was, does 
that justify the nameless horrors which have stained the annals of 
Louisiana ? 

Other States have known deeper wrongs than these, but they did not 
resort to the blade, the bullet, and the torch. New York has known 
deeper wrongs than these. It is an open secret now that in 1868 
John T. Hoffman was falsely counted into the office of governor 
when the people had elected John A. Griswold. The count was 
falsified, by forgery, more than thirty thousand in two counties. 
This was known then, better known than it is now that Kellogg 
did not receive a majority of the votes of Louisiana in 1872. Who 
did it ? The managers of the democratic party; and they seated in 
the Legislature,year after year, men whom the people had voted down. 
The same regime made the courts, and made them corrupt. They 
emitted forged naturalization papers by tens of thousands. They 
made the returning boards, and made them corrupt. They made the 
inspectors of election ; and the inspectors polluted and debauched 
the ballot-box. They divided the chief city of the State by sud¬ 
denly redistricting it on the eve of election in such wise as to bisect 
blocks and houses, so that men domiciled in the same house could vote 
and repeat in different election districts. Wielding usurped executive 
and legislative power, they plundered the treasury by the most colos¬ 
sal robbery of modern times. By such astounding means, a politi¬ 
cal party for years dominated a State of five million people, and held 
It by the throat. They made taxes, assessments, tributes, and exac¬ 
tions, the bribes and the penalties of political submission. 

What did we do? Not ruthless violence. We did not scourge, 
kill, and burn. We did not butcher men, women, and children, by the 
light of their blazing homes. Finally, we did not seize the capital 

4n 


42 


city of the State, barricade its streets, shoot down its police, and 
erect a reign of terror on the ruins of law. We persevered in peace¬ 
ful remedies. 

We asked Congress for a constitutional enactment to break the 
hold of organized violence and fraud on the ballot-box, that citi¬ 
zens might vote, and that their votes might be counted. How was 
our prayer received in this Chamber? How was it received else¬ 
where? We were loaded with imprecations and maledictions. We 
were blasted with constitutional anathemas. The whole body of the 
democracy in this Chamber heaped abuse upon us. Those who sat 
mute in these seats a day and a night, while they were pelted with a 
storm of monstrous and unjust accusation, have not forgotten the 
history or the cost of this legislation. We heard the same old argu¬ 
ment to which we had listened during the war. Violation of the Con¬ 
stitution, military despotism, arbitrary power, State rights, centraliza¬ 
tion, and all the worn formula in which Lincoln and Grant, and the 
republican party have been railed at whenever treason, anarchy, or 
deviltry has been put down. But nobody apologized, right out plain, 
for fraud and ballot-box stuffing. We all remember that nobody 
then, any more than now, in so many words justified thugs, repeaters, 
or forgers. Everything men could do to prevent the passage of the 
act was done, but we worried through, and for the first time in years 
New York had an election approaching fairness A leading demo¬ 
cratic paper called upon the populace to arm and “pitch the officers 
of the election into the river.” Other like papers spoke in like strain, 
but rioters have a wholesome fear of the beak and claw of national 
power, and so they did not resort to force, and citizens were allowed 
to vote, and the votes were counted with an approach to fairness. 
Such were our modes of redress. 

What has been the remedy of those deeming themselves similarly 
aggrieved in Louisiana ? The right to vote has been as free there as 
in New York—I repeat again that every citizen of the South has had 
the right to vote, and all white men could vote- freely. But, as 
sparks fly upward, discontent has run into violence, and Louisiana 
has been kept rocking, and sea-sick in the throes of unending revolu¬ 
tion. Events have been directed by men as rash and insane in coun¬ 
sel as the maniacs roaring at the doors of the French Assembly, who, 
in the name of humanity, flooded Franco with blood, and, in the 
name of religion, would have dethroned the Monarch of the skies. 
Murder, persecution, and barbarous hate, have preyed upon the poor 
and the defenseless. All seasons have been seasons of terror; all lo¬ 
calities have been the abodes of fear. Thirty-five hundred murders 
and woundings in eight years, says Sheridan, “for political senti¬ 
ments ! ” 

Search the annals of bigotry and intolerance, read the tearful story 
of “ man’s inhumanity to man,” and where in modern times can you 
find an instance of such God-daring and man-hating malignity as this 
statement uncovers ? Louisiana, including her chief city, has been 
for years a dark and bloody ground, from which victims by the thou¬ 
sand have been carried to the grave. 

Finally, in September, under formal proclamation from Penn, who 
ran as the democratic candidate for lieutenant-governor, embodied 
revolution shot down citizens and police, and seized the government, 
archieves, and property of the State. 

That commerce and industry have languished in the midst of such 
commotion, that securities have lessened in value, as the Senator from 
Ohio says, that rents have depreciated, that commercial prostration 


43 


lias ensued, are matters of course ; and I ask the Senator from Ohio, 
should his great State become for years the theater of lawless violence, 
with open defiers of the government holding bloody grapple for the 
mastery with the constituted authorities county by county, making 
life everywhere insecure, and making sloth the chief industry of the 
State, how long would it be before securities and property in Ohio 
would depreciate, how long be fore commercial and industrial prostra¬ 
tion would ensue ? 

If commercial and industrial prostration were the only evil in¬ 
volved in this bloody business, recreant indeed would be that son of 
the great State which honors me with a seat upon this floor, who could 
be laggard in anything for the pacification of the South. Show me 
a mode to pacify the South, and, no matter what party opposes it, 
my vote it shall have. No party can live that stands in the way of 
the prosperity of the South. The republican party has not an as¬ 
piration, an attribute, a conviction, a prejudice, a prayer, which 
would not be outraged by hostility to anything which would really 
tranquilize the South. 

But, Mr. President, bluster and revolution will not pacify the 
southern people; bloodshed will not make friends or make wealth; 
incessant denunciation of the civil authorities will not harmonize the 
South; exaggerating, fomenting, distorting every evil, real and im¬ 
aginary, under which the discontented and the slothful are laboring, 
will bring no solid lasting advantage to the southern people, white or 
black. Had I the power to make my voice heard and believed in 
every southern community, with all the sincerity of my heart, wish¬ 
ing them nothing but good, I would say: “Build, mend, heal, sow, 
plant—in short, goto work; do not feel above honest toil, quit idling 
and wrangling over politics; let a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work, 
and exact and equal rights for all, be the rule; dwell together in 
Christian charity, and all will soon be well.” 

No such gospel now prevails. 

The honorable Senator from Ohio complains that the Congres¬ 
sional Record is a national police gazette. It should not be so; 
let us reform it altogether. Dismount masked riders, disarm banded 
marauders, disband White Leagues, disown all toleration of violence, 
discontinue the bloody assizes of the democratic party, and the Con¬ 
gressional Record will cease to be a national police gazette. 

Mr. President, I have been speaking of history—the history of Lou¬ 
isiana. It is the statesman’s task to turn history into philosophy and 
prophecy. The modes adopted in New York and Louisiana are widely 
unlike; there is a broad difference between them. Whence comes 
this difference ? In what is it rooted? Four million black men aro 
the great factor in the problem. When the fate of the nation trem¬ 
bled in the wavering balances of war, they struck no blow at the Re¬ 
public ; they stood by the flag; they prayed for it; they toiled for it; 
they fought for it. The American people said they should be free 
and be citizens ; and the American people imbedded their will in the 
bulwarks of the Constitution. The nation forgave its enemies, and 
left the ballot and the right of self-government to them. But the 
same nation, at the same time, conferred the ballot and the right of 
self-government on those, who, galled by centuries of oppression, had 
still been true in the supreme hour, and had won their liberty and 
their citizenship on gory fields of battle. Congress did not do this. 
The people did it. The people in the States, speaking through their 
State Legislatures, put manhood, citizenship, the ballot, and equal 
rights for black men, into the Constitution. 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



There stand the amendments of freedom! The nation is for them; 
civilization is for them; humanity is for them; God is for them; and 
political parties and revolutionists shall not prevail against them. A 
great body of men in the land is not for them, but against them. A 
great body of men in the land will not submit to them. Social equal¬ 
ity is no part of them, but hate and pride rebel against them. This is 
the moral rebellion of to-day. Drop it in good faith, man-like, and the 
South will be tranquil in half a year. 

Mr. HOWE. In sixty days. 

Mr. CONKLING. My friend from Wisconsin says “in sixty days.” 
I believe so. The changed condition of society, the want of educa¬ 
tion, and other considerations, would for a time require more care and 
forbearance than other more settled and favored communities are 
obliged to observe; but a brief period, whether it be as my honorable 
friend suggests, sixty days, or longer—a brief period, improved in 
good faith, and good sense, and all will be well. 

This is the issue for the South. I fear for awhile it will remain the 
issue. Those most concerned can untie the knot. If they are im¬ 
prisoned in commotion and disorder, they carry the key to their own 
juison and can unlock it if they will, and when they will. Those who 
have their confidence can persuade them to do it. Here is the solu¬ 
tion—an easy, honorable, effectual solution. It will not be brought 
about by stirring the smouldering flame that burns upon a charnel- 
stone. It will not be brought about by exasperating ancient animosi¬ 
ties or reviving sectional schemes. It will not be gained by cloaking 
or denying the truth. It will not be wrought out by evasions and 
perversions, worse than apologies for wrong. It will come, when it 
does come, from an honest, manly acquiescence in the modes and the 
spirit of free majorities—the best system of government man has 
known,—although like everything human it is imperfect, like every¬ 
thing human it sometimes falls short of exact and perfect justice. 


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